Design reviews are great for refining and leveling up your designs—until you’re stuck waiting on feedback. Or trying to dig feedback out of an email chain that deserves a spot in the Guinness Book of World Records for length.
Not only are you trying to summarize 500-word emails, you’re also trying to understand text-based inputs about a visual medium. More than likely you’re also filtering out unspecific, cliche feedback like, “make it pop more.” There’s got to be an easier way.
If you already have a design review process in place or are considering adding one, consider these strategies and tools to streamline feedback, iterate on designs, and reach cross-team alignment.
What is a design review vs. design critique?
Though the terms are sometimes used interchangeably, design reviews and design critiques aren’t quite the same.
A design review evaluates a design based on a set of requirements or project goals. It often occurs at specific project or product development milestones, such as at the end of a sprint or before handing a design over to the dev team.
A design critique focuses more on subjective feedback and discussion. Critiques are often used to iterate on and improve a design based on feedback from diverse sources. They tend to happen when designers need to know whether a design meets project requirements before moving forward, such as critiquing a UX wireframe for a website redesign.
Teams can host both asynchronous design critiques and design reviews by allowing others to share feedback over a period of time rather than in real time.
Five core components of an impactful design review process
Design reviews are a vital part of the product development process, and there are a handful of essential things you need to get the most value from stakeholder and peer critiques.
1. Clear objectives
Outlining design review objectives helps you determine what type of design review to host, such as a peer or stakeholder review, and keep feedback focused on the areas you need help with.
To start, clearly define the purpose of your design review and your expected outcomes. For example, are you hoping to gather feedback, get approval for a design change, or both?
Then identify which aspects of the design need review, such as visuals or technical feasibility. Communicate these constraints along with relevant design guidelines beforehand so you can gather focused feedback.
Note which stage of the design process the review falls under. If you’re still in the concept stage, it may be more helpful to schedule a more ad-hoc design review that doesn’t require a polished presentation.
For example, Justyna Kusa proposed a Design Open Hour to Blinkist’s design team. During Open Hour, the group spends 10 minutes sketching in Figma, then everyone works in their own Figma frame to leave feedback and share ideas.
2. Relevant stakeholders
Your design review objectives also tell you which stakeholders you should invite. Higher-level leadership likely doesn’t need to provide input in the concept stage, but if you’re seeking approval, you’ll need them there.
It may also help to limit the number of stakeholders attending your design review. Meghan Schofield, a creative director at Google, recommends limiting your invite list to the people who are necessary for the conversation you want to have about your design at this time. And don’t forget internal stakeholders, who are often the first clients to approve your design.
One of Microsoft’s design teams assigns the following roles during every design review:
The presenter
The contributor, or those who share feedback
The sage, an expert designer or team veteran
The observer
The disruptor, or someone who asks the hard questions
The distiller, or the notetaker who compiles insights
A clear but limited set of reviews ensures all necessary perspectives are included without overwhelming the review process or slowing down the meeting with too many voices.
3. Pre-review prep
For designs that need a more formal review to gain approval, sending a pre-review video message is helpful. Share details with your meeting attendees ahead of time, including the context behind the design and design artifacts, prototypes, target user research, and requirements that the design needs to meet.
You’ll also want to include basic logistics information in your design review invite:
The date, time, and location of the design review—plus any relevant deadlines or timelines
The design review purpose
Who’s required to attend and whose attendance is optional
What aspects of the design reviewers should focus on
Feedback guidelines and templates
Before sending out your pre-review package, test any links, videos, or file attachments to make sure they open correctly and lead to the right file.
If you’re still in the early stages of your design but still want feedback, use existing communication channels like Slack. Loom’s design team takes this approach with their asynchronous design critiques. A designer shares a Loom video in Slack that walks others through their design context, goals, and feedback needs, then teammates leave questions, ideas, and feedback in a thread.
4. Structured review process
Whether you’re hosting a synchronous or asynchronous design review, attendees need to know how to share feedback.
For example, you might share a Loom video requesting feedback on a Figma design file. Let others know if you’ve left space in Figma for them to leave feedback on sticky notes, if they should comment in your team’s online collaboration tool of choice, like Slack or Miro, or record a Loom video of their own.
Here’s a quick video review use case for Loom’s own design team. Whether they’re recording feedback requests or sharing design tricks, they use Loom to collaborate asynchronously.
5. Specific feedback requests
Specify the type of feedback you’re seeking during the review. Andy Budd, a design founder and writer for Smashing Magazine, notes that you should get specific about the type of feedback you want—especially if you want to know if reviewers agree that your solution solves the problem you’re working on. Get as nitty-gritty as you need to when defining what you’re looking for.
If you’re not sure where to start, try finding a design review checklist and borrow ideas from there. For example, this UX design review checklist from Designlab covers a range of questions touching on everything from information architecture and visual hierarchy to accessibility and inclusivity.
Common challenges during the design review process
Design reviews are tough. Not only is it difficult to get everyone to chime in with helpful ideas, but you often have to balance timelines with feedback—and somehow maintain your creative vision while keeping stakeholders happy. Here’s how to succeed even when these common design review challenges crop up.
Challenge: Including diverse perspectives
You want to get insights from a variety of people. After all, it’s not just your fellow designers who will use your final product. To do this, aim to invite a variety of reviewers with different backgrounds, roles, and experiences as well as genders, ethnicities, and ages.
Help them feel welcome by creating an inclusive review environment and remaining respectful of different opinions. Make space for everyone to share their unique viewpoints without judgment. Appoint a neutral moderator to guide the discussion and ensure everyone gets speaking time.
It can also be helpful to provide context about where diverse perspectives are most valuable. For example, ask reviewers to consider cultural nuances and accessibility when reviewing your design.
Challenge: Prioritizing feedback
It’s likely you’ll receive contradictory and unhelpful feedback during your design review. This is normal—not all feedback is good, and you should plan to set multiple ideas aside.
Using tools like this design feedback form or this client design feedback Miro template makes it more likely you’ll collect helpful feedback aligned with your goals. You can also prioritize input from others with tools like feedback matrices.
Take time after the design review to consolidate your feedback and identify trends. You can also define priorities beforehand and bucket feedback into each priority category as you go. The Eisenhower matrix and MoSCoW prioritization methods are two great starting points for defining your priorities.
Challenge: Aligning your creative vision with stakeholder expectations
Nothing feels worse than delivering a final design that’s stripped of all your creativity. But when designers and stakeholders or clients have different ideas about what good design looks like, this outcome is almost inevitable.
Avoid misaligned visions by starting discussions before your design review meeting starts. Record a Loom video walking stakeholders through your initial concept and how it solves user problems, or share a mood board or reference to help illustrate your vision.
However you share your vision, highlight the benefits and solutions it provides. IBM designers host design reviews called “playbacks” that focus on the quantitative and qualitative benefits their vision provides to users. This approach also helps you speak the language of any cross-functional collaborators and conveys the value of your vision across different teams. For example, when IBM hosts playback zero to demonstrate the solution to an agreed upon challenge, designers present it as a holistic solution. The presentation includes the story of how a persona experiences the prototype as well as how that prototype addresses the persona’s wants, needs, pain points, use cases, and value propositions.
Challenge: Measuring the impact of design changes
Understanding the impact of design changes can help you during future decision-making stages. Measure the following metrics before and after you implement design changes to see the impact on user satisfaction:
Task success rate: Compare the percentage of users who successfully complete a task.
Time on task: Track how long it takes users to complete a specific task.
Error rate: Measure the number of errors or issues users encounter.
Engagement: Monitor conversion rate, time on site or app, product stickiness or how often users return to your app, and session depth rate.
Hosting user interviews and running A/B tests to compare new versus existing designs also helps you understand how design iterations impact user satisfaction.
How to create and implement an asynchronous design review process
Hosting an asynchronous design project review offers multiple benefits, especially for communicating within distributed teams. This approach is flexible enough to let reviewers provide feedback on their own schedule, saving time spent wrangling multiple calendars to find a suitable meeting time for everyone.
Here’s how to create an asynchronous design evaluation process that captures diverse, thoughtful feedback:
1. Prep for review
Start by identifying which stakeholders need to attend your review versus who’s optional. Some things to consider when inviting reviewers include:
Who’s directly impacted by this design or has a vested interest in the outcome?
Who’s working on related product designs?
Who can ensure consistency in brand identity?
Who can share feedback on usability and accessibility?
Don’t forget to invite reviewers who can share diverse perspectives—even if they don’t have a direct tie to the design project. This could be junior designers who might pose thoughtful questions, members of different teams who think about your product differently, or even end users.
Once you’ve selected your reviewers, confirm they’re available to review your design. Then deliver pre-review materials to help them share helpful feedback:
Design review objectives
Design files
Documentation, like target user research, personas, and past prototypes
Deadlines for submitting feedback
You’ll also want to specify where reviewers can share feedback, whether it’s in a Slack thread, in a Loom video, or written in a collaborative Google Doc.
2. Present your review
Provide reviewers with context about your current design iteration. Share the user problem you’re trying to solve, the current design stage, and the benefits of your proposed design change.
Product designer Richard Simms suggests sharing a Loom video that shows the current design and explains why you’re currently working to improve the design. He also recommends sharing your main takeaway or question right away to help reviewers provide more focused, constructive feedback. “By sharing your main point early on, you’ll allow your reviewers to evaluate the rest of your presentation through that lens.”
3. Share and discuss feedback
Don’t just passively collect feedback and go through it later. Read all inputs and ask clarifying questions to ensure you understand what the reviewer intends and the rationale behind their feedback.
If you find written feedback limits reviewers when they convey ideas, try using design feedback tools like InVision, Figma, or Zeplin. These tools often allow reviewers to add visuals or draw diagrams to help illustrate their ideas. Loom also lets you annotate your recordings and highlight your mouse clicks to enhance your explanations.
You can also encourage reviewers to share feedback via video. Recording a video message contributes to more constructive feedback by reducing miscommunications and including context while reviewers walk you through their thoughts. Webflow uses Loom to share feedback and the reasoning behind it.
“Video allows us to give feedback that is highly targeted,” says Vikas Bhagat, director of product marketing at Webflow. “So we can give a piece of feedback for a very specific set of design features on a mockup, for example, and it's highly focused.”
4. Document and follow-up
If you accept feedback through video recordings or online collaboration tools, you’ll need to collect and consolidate it in one place. Read through all feedback, discussions, and decisions that were made during the review, and then sort through it to identify trends, flag items that need follow-up, and prioritize your next steps.
Prioritization looks different for every team, but these items often top the list when deciding what to tackle first:
Critical issues that disrupt the user experience
Regressions from previous iterations that negatively impact the design
Changes that help your design meet stated goals or deliver a better user experience
You can also flag feedback that needs further follow-up and reach out to reviewers to ask for examples, reasoning, or even their thoughts on how to prioritize their feedback.
Get the most out of design review with Loom
Working asynchronously doesn’t have to feel like you’re working in a silo. Design teams can easily request and share feedback using tools like Loom that facilitate clear communication and context around design choices.
Use Loom’s screen recorder to walk reviewers through your current prototype, explain your vision, and request or share feedback. Features like time-stamped comments, embedded links to supporting documents, and videos that are ready to share once you’re done recording make Loom videos a more interactive way to host design reviews.
