Asking 'How' a designer did something is a great way to start a critique or conversation as it motivates the designer to tell his or her story. Asking 'Why' immediately puts the designer in the mindset of defending the design. From there, if not already mentioned before, ask the designer about the other options they considered. And finally, after listening carefully, you may offer some suggestions.

How did you come with that solution?

The goal of this question is to motivate the designer to share their inspirations or existing ideas they used to achieve their design. The ultimate goal is to bring all inspirations together to create newer, more unique designs. 

A word of caution: Be careful not to sound accusatory or condescending — i.e. implying they stole the idea.

Where Did You Get the Idea To Do It That Way?

Movement, animations, and transitions are crucial in modern experience design. Thus, thinking about moment-to-moment movement in a UI design will push the designer to change their perspective in good ways.

Can We Use Motion to Add Visual Cues?

It is important to consider simplicity in design and think about how to maintain clarity in the design with fewer clicks, less text, and not as many form fields to allow users to have a more seamless experience to complete their tasks.

How Could We Make It Simpler?

This question should be asked to consider all the paths that a user could take next, such as having to quit the app at some point, after submitting a form, in case of an error, etc. Thus, it is important to ask about what happens next until you have considered every possible scenario.

What Happens Next?

During a UI design critique, it is important to ensure that all events and interactions occur at the optimal time for the user's information flow. Asking 'When does that need to happen?' helps to iron out wrinkles in the timing of the interface by evaluating, at every opportunity, whether it is the right moment to perform an action, ask a question, or present data.

Asking 'When Does That Need to Happen?' in UI Critiques

To ensure a UI design critique fosters collaboration rather than defensiveness, reviewers should ask constructive, open-ended questions. Effective questions explore how the designer arrived at a solution, the inspirations behind the design, the timing of interactions, the use of visual cues, opportunities for simplification, and the possible paths a user might take next.

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- Design critiques are an important part of any product exploration.
- A good design critique should not be focused on pushing the designer to explain each one of their design decisions.
- A good design critique is meant to explore the design, find where it is working, and where it could be improved.
- If done well, design critiques allow everyone on the team to feel as if they have been heard and allow clients to give valuable feedback.

How To Run A UI Design Critique

- Conducting design critiques for user interfaces (UIs) needs to be performed throughout the entire product design and development process to keep the design on track.
- They are highly valuable in agile and lean UX environments, where designs go through multiple iterations before implementation.
- Running a UI design critique is challenging, requiring presenters to not only explain their design decisions but also to listen carefully to alternative ideas.
- A successful critique begins by establishing clear principles and ensuring all participants understand the specific goals and intentions of the design being evaluated.
- These principles can be divided into general guidelines applicable to any design critique and those tailored specifically to user interfaces.

Principles For Running A Great UI Critique

Whenever you ask a question, listen patiently to the answer that is given. Then craft your reply based on the answer given, not based on what you expected.

Don't Just Ask Questions to Answer Them

A good UI critique slows down to consider every element of the design but recognizes that this is not how the user will be seeing the design. Some of the important factors to consider in all UI designs are as follows.

- Ensuring consistency in color, typography, controls, images, and any other design elements (static or interactive) used more than once in the interface.
- Ensuring that the context of the user as they use the product is respected.
- Ensuring that the brand and design have a clear, consistent, and recognizable voice.
- Ensuring that motion and transitions work to provide a seamless and modern UI to the user.
- Ensuring that the design is simple as it can be to get the job done.

What A Good UI Critique Looks Like

- It is important that members of the team focus on the design with regards to the user instead of bringing their own biases to the design.

- The key to avoiding aggressive critiques is to set out clear principles and ask open-ended, constructive questions.

- It is important to remember that the idea is to strengthen the design collaboratively, not to win a design battle.

Avoiding Hostile Critiques

Design critiques should never be treated as a substitute for usability testing. Reviewers are not the end users, so no amount of internal critique can replace testing with real people. Usability testing is more precise and accurate than internal critiques, but it is also more time-consuming and expensive to run. Regular design critiques remain valuable for keeping a project on track, but they can never replace getting out in the field and testing with real-life users.

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