How to run a successful design review?
As product designers, we must constantly examine our work. Design reviews and feedback are both beneficial and necessary for a successful product at every level of the design process.
However, one of the most critical periods to examine your design is just before a product launch. This is the stage of the design when it has been completed and turned into a working prototype.
The design review time is critical, but having a defined process at this final review is also essential so that this review method may be used for every new design.
Design teams frequently overlook a final design review when working hard to reach a delivery deadline. Businesses often believe they don't have the time or money for this final phase. Still, the last design review before releasing a product can significantly impact your product and, more importantly, your end users.
Why are design reviews critical?
The software industry's best design work is hampered by resource limits, technological constraints, and time-to-market requirements.
As the design is handed from the design to the product management and development teams, each team makes revisions based on various time or business restrictions, much like a telephone game.
As with a telephone game, the end result is frequently not what the design team had in mind.
The focus on user demands is the most crucial factor that may be changed in design work critiques.
For example, a senior product designer examining the designs in one of the design reviews can mention that the colors in the design were not suited for accessibility.
Even a minor element like this can be enough to redirect the designers' attention back to the demands of the users. Making the product accessible to all users is a crucial component of any design approach and is something that design reviews address.
A final design review can help guarantee that the design is suited to user demands, just as the designer team planned. This benefits your product, users, and the general success of your team in the long run.
Benefits for designers
Design evaluations benefit the organization's products and business and the design teams themselves. Involving designers from various product teams in assessing all products released by an organization can aid in developing a shared design vision, strategy, and philosophy across the business's design practice.
These design reviews allow designers to examine what other teams are working on and determine whether there is a potential to establish a more coherent body of design work among the products.
Reviewing one other's work is also an excellent method to build team spirit, share information, and allow teams to look to each other for resources. This is especially significant in large organizations, as design teams are frequently isolated within their own groups and projects. As teams examine and handle the numerous design difficulties their team members face, they may apply that knowledge to their work.
How to conduct a successful design review
So, if design reviews are critical before product release, how do you conduct a good one? Here are a few guidelines based on my experience running design reviews.
A design review meeting can take a variety of forms. It can be remote or co-located, but in any case, key decision-makers from the design, management, and development teams must be involved so that everyone knows the findings and next steps.
To acquire a fresh, unbiased perspective, it's also vital to include designers who did not conduct the original design work themselves. Finally, having an executive approve the design work before it is released is critical in maintaining a design standard.
Here are several guidelines you might use in your own design practice to run successful design reviews:
Figure out the problems before the solutions
First, good critiques focus on identifying user experience difficulties rather than addressing solutions. The next step is to investigate solutions, which require a lot more in-depth conversation than this design evaluation permits.
Design reviews are used to detect and track any issues that may impact the quality of the user experience, whether they result from design flaws or limits in the development or business process. A team of at least three designers provides input on the assessed designs in an excellent review.
Take notes
During the review, assign one designer to take notes on all the feedback given so that the other reviewers may focus on commenting on the work.
As opposed to someone from the developer or management team, having a designer take notes is preferred because they are better at interpreting input from other designers.
Designate a leader
Another best practice is to assign a designer as the review lead. The review lead will begin the review meeting by ensuring that all stakeholders are present and clarifying everyone's expectations for what a design review entails.
They are also present to manage the dialogue and keep it focused on user experience issues rather than design solutions. They also keep the review moving so everyone has time to speak and the note-taker can write everything.
Include experienced designers
With the note taker and review lead assigned, the third reviewer is left to provide design advice.
A designer well-versed in design systems, guidelines, and the history of common concerns discovered in design reviews and how they were addressed is ideally suited for this function.
Again, it is critical to involve designers who did not work on the product directly so that their new perspective can be considered.
Use a checklist
When evaluating the quality of implemented designs, use style guides and patterns in addition to design rules. Checklists of typical design errors and oversights can also help ensure a comprehensive design review.
Common issues in all design parts, such as information architecture, navigation, interaction design, visual design, accessibility, and help and documentation, should be included in good checklists.
Checklists can be distributed to product teams before design reviews so that they can double-check their work before the review, as well as to reviewers during the review so that they can check off the basic necessities of the design.
Record the results
Following design reviews, identified concerns should be entered into a release management system, classified as design issues, and prioritized accordingly. Product teams can then explore potential solutions, and the product can be released if the problems have been resolved appropriately.
Executive approval
A critical final step is to have an executive from the design team approve the final design. This final clearance helps maintain a design standard throughout your design reviews and gives the design team a voice in the product's production.