Running Design Reviews

Running Design Reviews

Help the user run effective design reviews and critiques using frameworks from 8 product leaders.

How to Help

When the user asks for help with design reviews:

1. Understand the review context - Ask what stage the design is at and what kind of feedback is needed 2. Establish the hierarchy - Help them prioritize feedback by value, then usability, then delight 3. Structure the critique - Guide them on how to frame feedback constructively 4. Set the quality bar - Help them define what "good enough to ship" means

Core Principles

Follow the feedback hierarchy: Value, then Ease of Use, then Delight

Julie Zhuo: "The first thing that's most important to address is, well, is this thing actually valuable, is this solving the problem? Then once we do that, then let's focus on the next layer which I think about as ease of use... And then finally... delight." Disregard feedback about aesthetics until the core value proposition is validated.

Assign sponsors for major projects

Karri Saarinen: "We are basically the sponsors for the projects. So then we are responsible reviewing the work. And so we might just have a meeting where we go through, okay..." Assign a founder or senior leader as a sponsor for every major project to oversee quality through live demos rather than static slide decks.

Review 100% of shipped screens

Dmitry Zlokazov: "Founders of the company, they still review a hundred percent of screens that are being shipped and everything that you will see in the app pass this review." Maintain a high quality bar by having senior leaders review every user-facing screen before shipping.

Structure reviews around specific feedback requests

Geoff Charles: "Any large rock that we have on the roadmap needs to be brought into the product review process... but it needs to be structured in a way where you are asking specifically for what type of feedback you want." Only bring high-risk decisions to formal reviews and require presenters to specify exactly what feedback they need.

Start big picture before minutiae

Jessica Hische: "Always think big picture before you think minutiae, because sometimes people think that... They'll throw a bunch of minutiae stuff at me, but it's because they don't know what's really bugging them." Ask "What is the overall thing that's bothering me?" before commenting on specific elements.

Use blurred vision to see cohesiveness

Jessica Hische: "Use 'blurred eyes' to look at a brand's overall cohesiveness rather than focusing on individual pixels." Step back from details to assess whether the overall design holds together.

Questions to Help Users

• "What specific type of feedback are you looking for in this review?"
• "Is the core value proposition clear? Does this solve the right problem?"
• "Before we discuss details - what's the overall feeling when you first look at this?"
• "What are the highest-risk elements of this design that need the most scrutiny?"
• "What would make this not shippable? Are we close to that line?"
• "If a user sees this for three seconds, what will they understand?"

Common Mistakes to Flag

• Feedback without hierarchy - Mixing aesthetic opinions with core value concerns
• Static reviews - Reviewing slide decks instead of interactive demos
• Unstructured feedback requests - Not specifying what kind of feedback is needed
• Skipping to details - Critiquing pixels before validating the concept
• No quality bar - Shipping without senior review or clear standards

Deep Dive

For all 10 insights from 8 guests, see references/guest-insights.md

Related Skills

• product-taste-intuition
• running-effective-meetings
• scoping-cutting

Running Design Reviews - All Guest Insights

8 guests, 10 mentions

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Dmitry Zlokazov

Dmitry Zlokazov

"Essentially founders of the company, they still review a hundred percent of screens that are being shipped and everything that you will see in the app pass this review. And there are a lot of eyeballs that were scrutinizing this and thinking of all possible edge cases and nuances that we need to consider to make sure that every single customer will be happy in this product, in this flow."

Insight: Maintain a high quality bar by having founders or senior leaders review every single user-facing screen before shipping.

Tactical advice:

• Implement a review process where 100% of shipped screens are scrutinized by leadership
• Focus reviews on edge cases and nuances to ensure customer happiness

Timestamp: 00:19:31

Geoff Charles

Geoff Charles

"I think we're relating now is any large rock that we have on the roadmap needs to be brought into the product review process, where myself and the head of design are present and giving feedback, but it needs to be structured in a way where you are asking specifically for what type of feedback you need and you're highlighting the key risks and tradeoffs that you're making implicitly in that review."

Insight: Structure design reviews around specific feedback requests and the explicit highlighting of risks and tradeoffs.

Tactical advice:

• Only bring 'large rocks' or high-risk decisions to formal reviews.
• Require presenters to specify exactly what type of feedback they are seeking.
• Use Loom walkthroughs of Figma prototypes to motivate teams and anchor the vision.

Timestamp: 00:20:38

Jessica Hische

Jessica Hische

"The best thing is just seeing what's there and really being able to understand what's not working about it and what your goals are... Always think big picture before you think minutiae, because sometimes people think that... They'll throw a bunch of minutiae stuff at me, but it's because they haven't really stopped to think about what is the overall thing that's bothering them. You just never get there if you're always trying to address detail before you address the big picture stuff."

Insight: Effective design feedback must start with high-level goals and 'big picture' feelings before diving into specific technical details.

Tactical advice:

• Ask 'What is the overall thing that's bothering me?' before commenting on specific elements like letters or colors.
• Use 'blurred eyes' to look at a brand's overall cohesiveness rather than focusing on individual pixels.

Timestamp: 00:54:11

Julie Zhuo

Julie Zhuo

"The first thing that's most important to address is, well, is this thing actually valuable, is this solving the problem?, is it doing the job correctly... Then once we do that, then let's focus on the next layer which I think about as ease of use... And then finally, if it is valuable, it's easy to use, then I think we get into is it joyful to use, is it pleasurable."

Insight: Synthesize design feedback using a hierarchy: Value first, then Ease of Use, and finally Delight.

Tactical advice:

• Disregard feedback about aesthetics or minor details until the core value proposition is validated
• Categorize feedback into 'Value', 'Ease of Use', and 'Delight' buckets to prioritize changes

Timestamp: 00:50:08

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"I usually find that if you're going to go in and run a design critique or review session, it's helpful to start off front by saying, 'Here's where we are in the process. This is the most important set of things we want to validate.'"

Insight: Set clear expectations at the start of a review regarding the current stage of the project and what type of feedback is helpful.

Tactical advice:

• Explicitly state if you are looking for feedback on high-level concepts or low-level execution
• Match the fidelity of the prototype to the type of feedback you are seeking

Timestamp: 00:52:23

Karri Saarinen

Karri Saarinen

"I still run the design team, so I do see some of the designs on a weekly basis and then, or one of the other co-founders or head of product, we are basically the sponsors for the projects. So then we are responsible reviewing the work. And so we might just have a meeting where we go through, okay, well let's go through the demo and people can explain what's going on and how they think about it and why."

Insight: Effective design reviews involve project 'sponsors' who provide high-level feedback on the 'why' and the core concept during live demos.

Tactical advice:

• Assign a founder or senior leader as a 'sponsor' for every major project to oversee quality.
• Conduct reviews via live demos rather than static slide decks to see real interactions.

Timestamp: 00:33:26

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"But then before we are launching it, I might just go in and try it out and try the different states and click it around. And sometimes I find things... I just captured those things and send it to the team. And so we had to pull back the release a little bit until those things were fixed."

Insight: The final stage of a design review should be a hands-on 'stress test' by a leader to ensure the execution matches the vision.

Tactical advice:

• Perform a final 'click-through' of all edge cases and animations before general release.
• Be willing to delay a launch by a few days to fix janky interactions discovered during testing.

Timestamp: 00:34:27

Nickey Skarstad

Nickey Skarstad

"Ideally in a perfect world, there's three check-in moments. There is the first principles check-in. What are you trying to build... What is the most important thing?... Once you've aligned on that, then it's like, all right, what approach are we going to use?... And then it's like, all right, this is ready to ship. Let's check in again."

Insight: A structured three-stage review process (Principles, Approach, Readiness) ensures quality without micromanagement.

Tactical advice:

• Stage 1: Review first principles and problem definition
• Stage 2: Review the proposed approach and technical architecture
• Stage 3: Final readiness check before shipping

Timestamp: 00:52:26

Paige Costello

Paige Costello

"The inflection points are the kickoff... design concept review. Then, the products spec. Then, the full experience review or design crit of the end-to-end experience and launch."

Insight: Map design reviews and critiques to specific inflection points in the product development lifecycle to ensure timely feedback.

Tactical advice:

• Conduct a design concept review after narrowing down the problem space.
• Perform a full experience review (design crit) of the end-to-end experience before launch.

Timestamp: 00:15:49

Varun Parmar

Varun Parmar

"Our design leadership team does a triage of everything that got shipped into high quality or not high quality. It's just like a binary function... The reason why we believe it's not high quality is because A, B, C, D, E and we're making it available to other designers so they can actually start to build that telemetry."

Insight: A binary 'high quality vs. low quality' triage of shipped features helps calibrate the organization's taste and standards.

Tactical advice:

• Perform a monthly post-ship review of all features to classify them as 'high quality' or 'not.'
• Use specific examples of 'not high quality' work to teach the team the difference between acceptable and great design.

Timestamp: 00:37:51