This workshop will examine the language, rules and strategies for improving the conversations we have around designs through critique.
Collaboration requires us to share our work; to communicate our ideas with one another and collect other's thoughts in order to know whether the designs and creations we're producing are meeting the objectives of the project. But often we wrestle with collecting feedback. We get comments that are less then helpful because they seem irrelevant or unclear. Or we find that we're getting feedback and reactions at inopportune times rather than points in the process where they would have been useful in informing design decisions.
Our ability to critique speaks directly to the quality of the conversations we have with teammates, whether they be designers, developers, stakeholders or whomever. Designers frequently complain about the quality and uselessness of the feedback they are given, but we rarely take a step back and examine how to collect useful feedback and make our discussions around our designs more productive.
By taking the time to examine critique and how it fits into the design process and both an activity and an aspect of any communication we can focus our conversations and improve our ability to collaborate.
Participants in this workshop will explore various aspects of critique and the qualities that lead to strong and weak feedback through presentation materials and a series of hands-on activities. Each person will be provided with takeaways that can immediately be put to work to create a useful, collaborative environment for discussing designs.
About Adam Connor
As an Experience Design Director with Mad*Pow in Portsmouth, NH, Adam combines 10+ years of experience in interaction and experience design with a background in Computer Science, film, and visual design to create effective and easy-to-use digital products and services. He believes that no matter how utilitarian a tool is, at the core of its creation lies a story; uncovering that story is key to its success.
Adam is also a strong proponent of critique, not only in design, but also as a key component of collaboration, learning, and improvement. Occasionally, he shares his perspectives on design at adamconnor.com and discussingdesign.com.
