The moment of unveiling our designs should be among our proudest, but it never seems to work out that way. Instead of a chance to show how we can bring our clients’ visions to life, critique can be a tense, worrying ordeal. And yes, the stakes are high: a superb design is only superb if it goes live. Mismanage the feedback process and your research, creativity and hard work can be wasted, and your client may wonder whether you’ve been worth the investment.
The great unveiling is a pivotal part of the design process, but it needn’t be a negative one. Just as usability testing teaches us whether our designs meet user needs, presenting our work to clients tells us whether we’ve met important business goals. So how can we turn the tide to make presenting designs a constructive experience, and to give good designs a chance to shine through?
Timing is everything
First, consider when you should seek others’ opinions. Your personal style will influence whether you show early sketches or wait to demonstrate something more complete. Some designers thrive at low fidelity, sketching out ideas that, despite their rudimentary nature, easily spark debate. Other designers take time to create more fully-realised versions. Some even argue that the great unveiling should be eliminated altogether by working directly alongside the client throughout, collaborating on the design to reach its full potential.
Whatever your individual preference, you’ll rarely have the chance to do it entirely your own way. Contracts, clients, and deadlines will affect how early and often you share your work. However, try to avoid the trap of presenting too late and at too high fidelity. My experience has taught me that skilled designers tend to present their work earlier and allow longer for iteration than novices do. More aware of the potential flaws in their solutions, these designers cling less tightly to their initial efforts. Working roughly and seeking early feedback gives you the flexibility to respond more fully to nuances you may have missed until now.
Planning design reviews
Present design ideas face-to-face, or at least via video conference. Asynchronous methods like e-mail and Basecamp are slow, easily ignored, and deny you the opportunity to guide your colleagues through your work. In person, you profit from both the well-known benefits of non-verbal communication, and the chance to immediately respond to questions and elaborate on rationale.
Be sure to watch the numbers at your design review sessions, however. Any more than a handful of attendees and the meeting could quickly spiral into fruitless debate. Ask your project sponsor to appoint a representative to speak on behalf of each business function, rather than inviting too many cooks.
Where possible, show your work in its native format. Photocopy hand-drawn sketches to reinforce their disposability (the defining quality of a sketch) and encourage others to scribble their own thoughts on top. Show digital deliverables – wireframes, design concepts, rich interactions – on screen. The experience of a design is very different on screen than on paper. A monitor has appropriate dimensions and viewport size, presenting an accurate picture of the design’s visual hierarchy, and putting interactive elements in the right context. On paper, a link is merely underlined text. On screen, it is another step along the user’s journey.
Don’t waste time presenting multiple concepts. Not only is it costly to work up multiple concepts to the level required for fair appraisal, but the practice demonstrates a sorry abdication of responsibility. Designers should be custodians of design. Asking for feedback on multiple designs turns the critique process into a beauty pageant, relinquishing a designer’s authority. Instead of rational choices that meet genuine user and business needs, you may be stuck with a Frankensteinian monstrosity, assembled from incompatible parts: “This header plus the whizzy bit from Version C”.
This isn’t to say that you shouldn’t explore lots of ideas yourself. Divergent thinking early in the design process is the only way to break free of the clichéd patterns and fads that so often litter mediocre sites. But you must act as a design curator, choosing the best of your work and explaining its rationale clearly and succinctly. Attitude, then, is central to successful critique. It can be difficult to tread the fine line between the harmful extremes of doormat passivity and prima donna arrogance. Remember that you are the professional, but be mindful that even experts make mistakes, particularly when – as with all design projects – they don’t possess all the relevant information in advance. Present your case with open-minded confidence, while accepting that positive critique will make your design (and ultimately your skills) stronger.
The courage of your convictions
Ultimately, your success in the feedback process, and indeed in the entire design process, hinges upon the rationale you provide for your work. Ideally, you should be able to refer to your research – personas, usability test findings, analytics – to support your decisions. To keep this evidence in mind, print it out to share at the design review, or include it in your presentation. Explain the rationale behind the most important decisions before showing the design, so that you can be sure of the full attention of your audience.
Once you’ve covered these points, display your design and walk through the specific features of the page. A little honesty goes a long way here: state your case as strongly as your rationale demands. Sure of your reasoning? Be strong. Speculating an approach based on a hunch? Say so, and encourage your colleagues to explore the idea with you and see where it leads.
Of course, none of these approaches should be sacrosanct. A proficient designer must be able to bend his or her way of working to suit the situation at hand. So sometimes you’ll want to ignore these rules of thumb and explore your own hunches as required. More power to you. As long as you think as clearly about the feedback process as you have about the design itself, you’ll be able to enjoy the great unveiling as a moment to be savoured, not feared.
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12/12/2010
To be fair, I’m just starting off with pro design (I’ve been in-my-spare-time designing for around 10 years), but I think there’s a lot to be said for the role of designer to guide the client toward what they want the design to be—that is to say, to give them as much feedback as they want to have.
This method probably works a lot better with a client that is really just one or two people, though, rather than a whole company or the like… And I think it depends on the client even in that smaller category. Sometimes I think it makes sense to give a client lots of options before starting a design in earnest; other times it’s clear that would be a bad idea.
Maybe it’s because I’m on the beginner side of pro, but I don’t like to have all the design-power in my projects. After all, the ideas for the designs did originate in the clients’ heads—even if I’m the one bringing them to fruition and, hopefully, improving them a great deal. THAT BEING SAID, if someone wants something that is just bad practice (navigation that is too small or obscure to read, for example), I will calmly and with-an-air-of-expertise explain why we should do something else. And then they’ll usually agree…
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12/12/2010
“Asking for feedback on multiple designs turns the critique process into a beauty pageant…”
Absolutely agree! I almost always start designing with the intention of presenting multiple design concepts, but find that one grabs me and won’t let go until it’s finished (or finished enough to show), by which point I believe in it so strongly it’s the only one I could bear to present.
It’s been about 8 years since I showed more than one design, and I’ve watched people do it since then, finding one of the following two rules to be true:
If you show three designs, the client will ask you to combine the worst elements of all three; or, if you present a good design, an average design and a poor design (which you believe is the one that will push them to one of the better designs, because who in their right mind would pick that one?), the client will pick the awful one.
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13/12/2010
<blockquote><strong>“Don’t waste time presenting multiple concepts.”</strong></blockquote>
Wish I could explain this to a couple of my clients. They don;t listen and present like 10 comps – from the very early junky looking designs to progress #10 that actually works. Of course the client chooses the worst comp…always.
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13/12/2010
A major challenge I face when presenting designs is that my clients are generally not very web-savvy. I can try to educate them on what works and what doesn’t, and therefore explain why I did things certain ways. But if their view of the web is just “online brochure” they sometimes insist on bad color choices, bad design, and/or bad typography. Other than (sometimes repeatedly) saying things like, “These are web design best practices, and here’s why…” how do you convince your clients that you’re the expert and they should trust your judgment?
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13/12/2010
I love what you said about planning design revisions. A few years back I made the move away from presenting 3 totally different look and feels in design projects. This in turn allowed our team to focus on the design / functionality that we thought would be the best fit for the project. In the end we found these design/functionality decisions were more well thought out and better executed.
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14/12/2010
I like the concept of testing your design. To many designers make something really beautiful, but it makes it also very hard to read/navigate the website.
Using A/B split testing is a very good tool if you design a website.
It is better to have a website design that is less attractive but that makes the visitor do where the website is created for, then to have a beautiful design where the visitor get confused.
Very good ideas Cennydd. I liked it so much that I’ve just bought your book Undercover User Experience Design on amazon. I hope to find lots of more great ideas.
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14/12/2010
I couldn’t imagine a better example than presenting logo work when it comes to showing options. I have worked for many studios and showing many options (as many as 20) was standard practice. When I started doing freelance work, I realized that showing many options was a waste of time. Would an umpire in baseball present multiple calls after a play in order to show his thoughtfulness? Never. Studios operate this way because they spend more time generating work rather than spend it up front understanding the client and the project goals. Its ironic how some studio owners feel it is their duty to supply clients with “more” rather than staying true to the “less is more” philosophy and producing quality rather than quantity. I guess it all depends upon the client. I remember doing work for companies that would not hire you if they couldn’t see 20+ options. I say, “Find a new client. There’s plenty of them out there.”
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16/12/2010
Thanks for the comments, all.
Scott – at the risk of an egregious a plug, I talk a bit about how to back up your design decisions and build client trust in my book http://undercoverux.com. It’s a complex issue that relies on account management, pricing and solid presentation of rationale in the critique process. The key thing for me is that deep design thought (including having already looked at options your clients may request) always makes it easier to establish expertise. That said, as ID says, there can come a point at which it’s easier to find a new client if things are becoming too difficult.
Henk – great stuff, I hope you enjoy it!
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04/01/2011
I’m glad to see so much talk of justification – I find that an incredibly interesting, and important factor to nail for each client.
Justifying your decisions with logical thinking and being able to articulate that process is an excellent tool for winning clients over.
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