Design reviews are a crucial and more formal part of the design process to share design solutions with the rest of the team responsible for implementation. Reviews are used to ensure the necessary stakeholders are in the loop and feedback is continuous. It’s the responsibility of the designer to make sure that reviews happen on all features. The format and cadence of the reviews depends on the feature and the team. Below are a few types of reviews we follow.
Sharing work in Design Critiques
For more details on how Design Critiques work, visit the Design Critiques page.
Sharing work for review with feature teams
Sharing in the Design Specs in the Spec Reviews Channel
Sharing work in the Spec Reviews Channel is a great way to gather feedback from relevant team members while also giving visibility to the broader organization and open-source community. It also gives insight in to our design process and the new features the team is working on.
What to share in Spec Reviews Channel
Work in progress that is 70% complete or more. If you’re looking for feedback on work that is in an earlier conceptual state, It’s best to keep earlier drafts for the immediate team working on the project or the internal design team.
What not to share in Spec Reviews
Sensitive information or client data. Remember this is a public channel open to the broader community. Ensure designs do not include client names or other sensitive details.
Early, rough draft concepts. This type of work is usually best shared in other venues with more internal teams.
Long-term vision design work
Sample template for sharing design work for review
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Mobile v2: Channel Files view
Summary: In the webapp, we have a way to view files posted in a channel. However, the mobile app does not currently have any way to do this. Users expect to see parity between webapp and mobile with features like this, so we need to add this to the channel experience on mobile. The proposed solution is to:
Add a ‘Files’ option to the channel info modal
Tapping this new ‘Files’ option would take users to a child view of the channel info that shows files in the channel.
Leverage the patterns used currently in the global search view with files
Show files by recency (most recent files posted in the channel)
Infinitely load more files on scroll
Stage: 80% draft
Reviewers: @Eric Sethna @Asaad Mahmood @Elias Nahum @Jason Frerich
Links:
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Involve relevant stakeholders
Typically, the stakeholders involved in new feature design are a subset of people from the immediate feature team that owns the area your new feature belongs to. In some cases, for smaller projects, a Product Manager (PM), Engineering Lead from the feature team will be enough. In the case of larger feature proposals, you may need to involve the entire feature team to get all necessary feedback.
Synchronous reviews
Typically, the first review of a feature is best done in a synchronous format over Zoom or a Mattermost Call. It is usually beneficial to walk the team through the proposed solution—ideally in a clickable prototype.
Walkthrough the solution and hold questions until the end
Go around the room with various stakeholders and capture feedback as comments in Figma on the relevant screens
Ensure all voices have an opportunity to ask questions or share their feedback
Summarize feedback after the call and share a link to the Figma file to capture further feedback asynchronously.
Asynchronous reviews
In the case of a small feature improvement or in the case of a subsequent follow-up review for a larger feature, async reviews are sufficient. This can be done through a post in the team channel, through a Loom walkthrough or in the Spec Reviews channel (see Spec Reviews page for more).