How many times have you brought a design that you’ve poured your heart and soul into before your customer, just to get your soul a black eye? The design review meeting is where good designs can turn bad, or even worse, get stifled and never evolve into great design.
Needless to say, the skills of facilitating design review meetings are an important piece of the design process. I’ve been doing this for a long time, and I still find myself refining my style and approach. Moreover, no 2 design reviews are alike. This makes it difficult to approach the situation in a more scientific fashion.
I have 8 considerations that guide our design review meetings with customers and project teams. I use the word “considerations” because I don’t believe in hard and fast rules that will work for all instances.
1. Face-to-face or virtual meetings?
I prefer face-to-face meetings over email or online meetings. There are benefits to the latter: less arguments, ideas come individualized and not in a groupthink environment, saves travel time and is convenient. I go with in-person meetings because: it’s easier for customers to give feedback verbally, a meeting allows people to focus on the design, we can have two-way discussions so everyone has the opportunity to be heard, and it’s also a good way to continue to build a rapport with your customers. I’ve also noticed subtle differences in the way people perceive and name colors. When in-person people can point at elements and also draw ideas on paper.
2. Don’t be alone
Having someone else from your team join the review meeting can be a big help. They can take notes, keep an eye on the clock, and give another point of view. Communicating design feedback can be difficult; having another set of ears can confirm or question your interpretation of the feedback. This becomes more necessary when there are multiple people in the meeting offering feedback.
3. Be upfront with meeting goals
At the start of the meeting let everyone know the purpose of the meeting, and what you’d like to leave the meeting with. For example, the purpose can be: “to pick one design direction and gather feedback”. This way all participants know your goal and will help you achieve it. If you don’t focus your audience they won’t know how to do it on their own.
4. Be upfront with how you’ll run the meeting
Now, this is tricky. There are many different ways and styles to run the meeting. I tend to go with something like this: First, I’ll present designs and I’ll be sure to go over them quickly so we can get to discussions. I’ll ask everyone to hold feedback until I open up for discussion. I tell them to take notes so they won’t lose a thought, and tell me to “pause” if they need more time on a design. I’ll present the designs along with the logic and rationale that went into it. Everything in our designs has a purpose to it. Once I’m ready to open it up to discussion I’ll either go around the room and ask for feedback or open it up free-for-all.
5. Facilitating the feedback
I defer to the basic rule of being a gentleman, keep everyone in the room as comfortable as possible. Remember, good feedback is not always a compliment. Good feedback helps to evolve the design. Open discussions diverge and create an array of ideas, suggestions, problems, strengths, weaknesses, etc. It’s your job to let the discussion flourish, while curbing argumentative or combative behavior. At some point, it will become imperative to converge the feedback into agreeable action items. Frequently, we can’t solve an issue then and there, so we acknowledge the issue and say we’ll work it out. Basically, the feedback is needs to have some form of closure or else people will leave the meeting with a bad taste.
6. Listen and defend
Your design will face loads of criticism. Hell, that’s why your there. Make sure you listen to the feedback. Even if it’s difficult and your heart rate starts racing, make sure you listen. At the same time remember that everything in your design is purposeful. Don’t be afraid to defend your logic. Always keep the audience in mind. Ask: “how would the audience react?” Always keep the business objectives in mind. Ask: “how does this impact business objectives?” Don’t hesitate to quote industry experts. “Pinaki always says if the experience isn’t good then your brand will be hurt no matter how big your logo is.” or “Technology serves a human need and not the other way around.”
7. The logistics of presenting
We haven’t completely figured this out. When we present via projector we don’t need much prep time, but the colors never look right. I like 11×17″ paper printouts because the color come across better, we can easily write on it and turn over the designs
that are out, but that takes time, and it’s not like looking at a computer screen. Moreover, it’s not green to print out so many copies. Boards are presentable, but no one can see the details of the design from far away. I’ll stick to a mixture or printout and projector for now.
8. Present a little at a time
The more things to look at, the harder it becomes for your customers to focus and give feedback. So say you’re walking into a meeting where you want to review 3 options for a homepage, interior pages, and a PDF template. You should present and get feedback one at a time. This means that you shouldn’t present everything all together and then expect focused discussion on everything. Break it up into 3 mini-presentation and review sessions. This makes it very important to keep an eye on the clock so you get through everything.
So that’s it. I hope this helps you get your designs to good places.
