design-critiquelisted

# Design critique A critique is a working session where a designer shows unfinished work and a group helps make it better. It is not a status update and not a sign-off gate. Left unstructured, it collapses into taste debates about color while the actual problem goes unexamined, and the designer leaves with fifty opinions and no decision. A method keeps the room aimed at the goal and turns feedback into changes someone owns. ## Method 1. **Open with the presenter contract.** Before showing a single screen, the designer states the problem being solved, the constraints, the fidelity stage, and the two or three decisions they actually want feedback on. Without that frame, the room defaults to bikeshedding whatever is easiest to have an opinion about. 2. **Frame the user and the metric, not the feature.** Present the job-to-be-done, who has it, and what success looks like. Reviewers cannot judge a checkout flow without knowing whether the goal is fewer steps or fewer errors, and those pull in opposite directions. 3. **Enforce the feedback rules out loud.** Critique the design against the stated goal, not personal preference; ask "what problem does this solve" before proposing an alternative; and separate observation from prescription. A facilitator names it when someone jumps to a fix: "that is a solution, what is the problem you saw". 4. **Match critique altitude to fidelity.** Wireframes get flow and hierarchy feedback, not typography notes