Communication at every step of the design process is crucial. In your design critique meetings, you want to stay focused on the right conversation and get feedback from everyone. Decide together what you’re going to discuss and what you’re not. This helps ensure everyone contributes to the conversation and feels like their opinion has been heard.

When you ask for feedback from everyone involved in the project, there’s a chance the conversation can go down a rabbit hole and derail the meeting. By using this structured agenda, the team can share their thoughts or questions ahead of time. This might seem like an unusual approach to design feedback, as most people would like to explain the reasoning behind their choices. You can still do this either by writing your thoughts in a memo or by sharing a screen recording of you discussing your work as you walk through it. This gives everyone a chance to brainstorm and reflect before the meeting. 

Conversations often become more productive with this approach because it’s less reactive. People are less emotional about their questions and responses to others. Once you’ve discussed the feedback, make any final decisions and assign the resulting work to each person.