As you can see, a really happy bunch of product
design people having fun while doing feedback sessions
each week.
And when I rehearse the talk earlier to some friends,
they were asking afterwards if I won't touch the whole scenery
or if this is a real screenshot, and I
can tell you this is real.
And I can tell you it wasn't always like that.
And as one philosopher once said, the path to paradise
begins in hell.
So I'm going to talk a little bit about how it was before,
back in the days.
And I think it was two years ago now.
We had this really nice meeting with all the design people.
So brand design, user experiences, [INAUDIBLE]
design, and we were just giving each other
an overview each week.
But I was really missing some more feedback culture and nitty
gritty design feedback culture with my product design
colleagues to improve the quality, consistency,
and all that stuff.
And so we just tried it out and set up the meeting.
And the deal was good, but the plan didn't really work out.
I can tell you.
And when I observe it now in retrospect,
I think there are some main points why it didn't work out
in the first place.
First of all, structure, structure everywhere.
My head is sometimes really messy,
and so I really enjoy it.
When during my work, everything falls into place.
You have those components and they are used everywhere
and everything is consistent, and so I
named the whole meeting the Design System Nerd Talk.
And let's just name it, I completely killed the fun.
As much as I love my colleagues, but they don't love
design systems as much as I do.
So this was already kind of a bummer, to be honest.
But yeah, it got even a bit worse,
because we were always sitting in front
of a beamer or big television screen.
And there was no real collaboration possible.
So imagine you're about to receive
some feedback on something you worked on, probably for weeks.
And then everything is on this big screen everyone.
Sitting around you and then it starts people
pointing onto the screen and saying, OK, the typography,
can you put it a bit to the top and can you probably
change the color a bit?
And then you're not just under pressure
because you're presenting something
and you're about to receiving feedback,
but you're also under pressure to master the whole tooling.
Oh, God.
So this is not so easy when you're done
in the spotlight of everything.
And I think because of that, we started to share
ideas and our work late.
And this remembers me always of the time
when I was a freelancer and sometimes
in rounds of 20 people giving and receiving feedback.
And then I had sweaty hands when I was preparing
for this meeting beforehand.
I try to make everything as shiny and perfect as possible.
So every pixel had to be in the right position.
And then I was not really open to receive feedback anymore,
but I really just wanted that everyone just
put their thumbs up and say, yay, great work.
And to be honest, yeah, this didn't really feel good.
And I think this is why we skipped it and skipped it,
postponed it, find some reasons why we shouldn't attend,
and at some point completely drop this.
And I think when you have a healthy culture
in your company, this is also totally fine.
If something doesn't create any value for you, just leave it.
That's totally cool.
Anyways, I still get a bit frustrated,
because they still thought it's a good idea.
And as I said, the path to paradise begins in hell.
And we didn't give up.
And we're now talking a little bit more
about the paradise part here.
And it started with change.
We changed and our needs changed in the company and in our team.
First of all, we grew as a design team.
So even the weekly rounds where we were just
giving each other an overview of our work
and not going into details get even more high level
when we grew as a team.
So there was no real feedback situation possible.
Then we also grew as a company and we
switched our working mode.
Back in the days we were sitting on one huge room with all
the designers all around us, and there was obviously
a bit easier to just grab someone
who's sitting next to you, talk with them about something.
So we switched into the working mode of streamlined teams
and every designer was sitting there next to developers,
QA, PO, and so on.
And even though this is really nice
to work closely with the development team,
we were super afraid to lose connection, because at the end
you want to deliver one product to the customers.
You want to deliver one user during, one experience.
And then we also switched our tuning to Figma,
and this made real time collaboration
possible for the first time, which
was a game changer for us.
And then corona hit, and we went fully remote
and we were also being afraid of losing the social connection
with each other, which we always had when we were just
having fun in our office space.
And then we've just tried it again and it just worked.
Actually it just worked.
I can tell you.
And yeah, now I'm going to tell you
a little bit how it works for us,
our 10 secrets for a healthy and loveable design critic meeting.
Obviously, maybe not everything might work for you,
maybe it's just reassuring during some things,
but this is how it works for us.
Let's get into it.
The first secret or rule if there are no rules.
And I can't stress this enough.
I know there are some contrary media articles out there always
telling you about time [INAUDIBLE] everything
and someone's taking notes, someone is presenting,
some of the bunch of people giving you feedback.
But I don't think this is how it should be.
There are so many rules every day,
especially when you're working in the tech company.
Everything is so much directed.
You as a design group should open up and have some space
where you can be yourself and where you can try things out
and they can be open and honest with each other
and sometimes, yes, sometimes you're
maybe losing some time in a nitty gritty detail,
but overall you feel comfortable around each other
when you probably have less rules than before.
The second one is train your feedback skills.
And I'm emphasizing the word skills, because nobody on Earth
is born with a good ability to give and receive feedback.
So pay attention to this, pay attention to your own feedback
skills, and luckily in our company,
the people department is offering feedback sessions
where you can train this ability, but it's so important.
And there are two things which helped me the most.
Obviously you can hold a complete talk just
about feedback, but there are two things
which help me the most.
First of all, ask questions.
I'm, most of the time, a pretty direct and blunt person,
and I totally can understand that people are easily
offended by what I say.
So I started to ask questions and be curious
about the work of my colleague presenting to me
and to start the dialogue.
And this is way easier for them to explain what they did
and for me to understand what they did.
And also for people who don't like to share so much.
I think it's way easier for them to ask questions
instead of telling them, I don't like this button
because of this reason so much.
And the second thing I learned is that you
don't need to act on feedback.
Feedback is always an individual perspective,
and it is not the truth.
It's just one of multiple truth.
So it's helped me really in feeling
less offended by feedback when it was too negative,
and so it's a bit easier to receive it and probably
just let it go at some point.
The third part is put your ego aside.
And I really know it's easy to get sometimes a little bit
cocky about a really awesome design you just
did, and every user loves it, and it's totally awesome
and be self-confident of course, that as soon
as you're going to a meeting where you're
about to get feedback for your designs,
make sure that you put your ego aside
and be vulnerable and be open for getting some input.
Otherwise, you have this ego all around you
and you create a barrier and this barrier
keeps you away from growth and keeps you away from improving
yourself in your work.
The fourth secret is it's always a brainstorm.
And yes this is often going totally
into contrary to a lot of media articles out there.
But it's always a brainstorm because you're always
putting your head into it and thinking
about the problem you might want to solve or you just solved
and you're presenting to your colleagues,
but I want them to be open also about new perspectives.
Let's not fall for the bias that we just
should stick to the solution because we went down
the road for some time.
Let's make sure that we create a space where everyone can give
new ideas at any point in time.
And then number five, create a safe space for your team
and have some fun.
And yes, also creating a safe space for your team
is already one top for itself.
Nevertheless, we should remind ourselves,
always and always that this is the first part to opening up.
So make sure that you pay attention to all that stuff.
And I think one part of it is creating some fun moments
and wasting some time together, because when
you team up and have some fun together,
it's way easier to deliver something new and outstanding,
because you're doing it together.
And also when you have a safe space for your design
team and to team up with them, with your peers,
it's always easier also to go to developers and product
owners, which you should share your work with as well,
obviously.
But when you know you already have your bag of the prizes,
it gets sometimes a bit easier in negotiating.
And this is actually one of our situations
we had during a feedback session.
One of our colleagues was showing us on a journey
and what things might happen and at some point
it was like, wait, this looks like it, [INAUDIBLE],, OK,
and then we were just googling, put everything together,
and name this thing King Pool.
It's super ridiculous and I can tell you,
obviously it helps a little bit when you're
having the same humor here.
Nevertheless, this cost us a few minutes,
but I think it's an investment in the future when you have fun
with each other, because you start
to trust each other a bit more and you open up a bit more.
So I think it's super important.
And then keep it small.
This sounds obviously obvious, but I
think we often don't pay enough attention to it.
And I may have one chart for this,
and I think it's super easy to grasp.
So there are three people and there
are just three lines of connection between them
possible.
But as soon as you have five people
you already have 10 lines, and as soon
as you have eight people, there are 28 lines.
Doesn't this look complicated to you?
I mean it's so hard already with a few people
to understand each other and build some good situation,
but eight people seem way too much when I look at this chart.
So currently we're, I think seven or eight product
designers in our group and it starts
to be too much, so we have to split up at some point.
So I think four to five people is the perfect amount.
The seventh point of solve problems together.
And I'm emphasizing here in the word
together because this craved so much input
at a very short point in time.
I mean, we usually grab a coffee before we start our meeting
and just lose my job and just have some fun with each other
and just talking about our last week, and at some point,
one of my colleagues is dropping in here at all, we
we're all jumping into the Figma file.
And then they state the problem or at which point
of the journey they are in and what they want to have feedback
for, and we just start talking and thinking out
loud about the stuff that they show,
but we're also just grabbing a frame
duplicating it and immediately trying all things.
Sometimes 10 minutes, sometimes we're
also not talking a lot meanwhile we're
trying to solve the problem together or get also
a new perspective onto the problem, and at the end,
it starts to become our thing, because we all
participated into the whole design perspective here.
And so it's really important that you
have this moment of solving something together and trying
things out together while giving each other feedback.
The eighth point is respect different needs
and personalities.
And I really love it how much we start and a lot of companies
to pay attention on higher for diversity.
But we also have to remind ourselves
that this is the day where they work.
We have to make sure that everyone
feels integrated every day.
So I just get to hear an example, for example,
of the Introverts during a conversation,
mostly listening and thinking, and it's totally fine.
Should we pressure them to present something when they
don't feel comfortable yet?
Even if they are just listening, they learned something,
they see how we act with each other,
and maybe the extra words of a team
should be the leading example, in the first place,
to create an atmosphere and to show everyone
that it's totally fine to present something
that you created, and maybe at some point, the 10% talking
stop itself.
So everyone in our company can share but nobody has to.
And as you can see here in the screenshot, my colleague,
Teresa, who is definitely an introvert,
she reserved the slot for the next week's feedback's
already minutes immediately after our meeting, which
was super buzzing and full with topics, so she didn't
have any space to bring hers.
And this makes me so happy that we accomplished
that everyone wants to share.
The ninth part is shared early and share often.
And yes, we focus all the time on any stage.
Just bring what you want at any point.
Don't overprepare it, and then think.
Sarah Gibbons here phrased it really perfectly
and I just want to read it out.
Multiple designers who work on different parts
of a big project can pick up possible inconsistencies
across the overall user experience,
and they all participate in early critiques
of each other's draft designs.
Exactly like this, especially draft designs.
And last but not least, name things properly.
You could now say potato potato, but come on,
how much time spent in the last 12 months
thinking about what words should you write on the bottom?
We all know this is important and we should pay attention,
because the perception can be totally different when you're
not using the right words.
So why shouldn't we pay attention
by naming our meetings properly and researching the word
critique, something the first day
is not that bad, the art of criticism, why not?
But in the eighth example it already states,
the politician received a lot of public criticism
for his controversial stance on the issue.
Well, that doesn't sound positive at all.
Should be really named something of our meetings
like that, and when you go deeper into synonyms censure?
I'm not sure.
Maybe it's just because I'm German
and I don't really understand every word in the perfect way,
but it doesn't sound positive.
So we changed our names.
Our feedback meeting each week is now the design sync
and our private reflection is the product designers lounge.
And I know it sounds a bit silly, but so far it works.
And when you then pay attention to all those 10 things
and secrets here, maybe you will end up
with this green shirt you can proudly present.
My colleague, Rudy, was happily writing
about our meeting we have as always is super nice fashion,
and my colleague, Teresa, was proposing
to extend the meeting by half an hour.
And isn't that the best feedback you can get?
And actually yes, we did.
We extended our meeting by half an hour,
and everyone is happy about it.
Remember back in the days we were skipping the meeting
because everyone hated it, and now we want to have more of it.
That's just awesome.
I love it.
And beside of the extension of the meeting, because we
like it so much, also the overall consistency
of our designs improved and the quality of our system.
Everything is falling into place now.
Everything that was too messy for me before it's
automatically happening now, because we
see the reason for it.
And so I want to leave you now with something.
Yeah, don't take worklife too seriously.
Add some doggo pictures as you can see here in the background.
Have fun, kill some rules, and enjoy.
Thank you so much.
Have a great day.