More Design Critique, please
Stakeholders values co-creation. Prior to that, Product Managers should help Product Designers to conduct effective Design Critique sessions
Hello, I’m Tiago Ferreira, Sr. Product Manager in Brazil with +6 years of experience crafting products. With The Next Movement, I want to share part of my product management experience with the whole world, but also talk about career more broadly, technology, good books, and - why not? - philosophy, music, culture, gossip, just like an open diary. If you enjoy reading my article, subscribe and share it with your friends 🤓
Design critique is one of the less discussed aspects I observe Product Managers talking about - probably because we prefer to let the Product Designer lead this process.
Yes, the designer is the primary responsible, but PMs should recognize that this is one of the most engaging parts of crafting a product. And stakeholders enjoy collaborating during this phase.
First, what is a design critique?
Imagine you need to build a feature in a B2B product that facilitates the interaction between the clients and customer service team.
Of course, the CS team needs to be involved since the beginning of the discussions, but, more importantly, you want them to validate the feature flow.
After proposing the best solution with your Product Designer and Tech Lead, the designer creates a blueprint, illustrating every possible aspect of interaction. (Before presenting the blueprint to stakeholders, it’s crucial to understand its feasibility with your technical peers. That justifies the need for Tech Lead.)
The CS team needs to contribute at this phase but, remember, no one has seen any prototype yet.
In support of this process, the Product Designer still involves the stakeholder until she believes she has enough information and validation to update her Figma with a high-fidelity prototype.
Then comes the moment to show it to stakeholders. That’s what we call Design Critique, aiming to validate, correct, adjust, or even abandon ideas throughout the process of creating a new product or feature.
How Product Managers facilitates Design Critique
Product designers know that stakeholders need to be involved from the start of a given challenge, but they need support during that process.
As the responsible for the product, the PM likely knows which data is generated, what the pain points are, and what should be improved with the new product or feature.
I recommend PMs reinforce the goals and remove obstacles for the Product Designers. Ideally, she could extract the data they need, but PMs often spend more time with data analysis and could share all their knowledge, adding more value to the design evaluation.
And when all of those moments with the stakeholders come, the PM plays a key role, helping the PD conduct, eliminating doubts, and so on. Before each interaction with the main stakeholders, PM, PD and the Tech Lead must be well-aligned with the solution part.
Due to complexity, it would be necessary to have more than one Design Critique session with stakeholders. It is common to see PDs conducting this process with their peers, but that is just one aspect of the Design Critique’s importance.
Usually, stakeholders contribute by questioning the flow, the user actions, and how the proposed feature or product will impact their team. Inevitably, silly design suggestions could appear - and the PM and PD must deal with that - but the alignment and co-creation between the product team and stakeholders are the most valuable parts of this process.
Believe me: good Design Critique sessions help product teams avoid many subsequent useless meetings.