Design critiques have a habit of either not happening or ballooning into a two-hour meeting where nobody leaves with a clear next step. A lightweight format keeps the value without the sprawl.
Set the frame first
Before anyone reacts to the work, the person presenting spends two minutes on context: what problem this solves, who it is for, and what kind of feedback is actually useful right now. Early concept work and a near-final screen need very different conversations, and saying so up front saves everyone from critiquing the wrong layer.
Separate observations from solutions
Ask the room for what they notice before anyone proposes a fix. “The primary action is competing with three other buttons” is more useful than “make it blue”, because it points at the underlying problem and leaves room for more than one answer.
Leave with decisions, not just notes
End by writing down what is actually changing and who owns it. A critique that produces a tidy list of opinions but no decisions is just a meeting. The point is to move the work forward, not to admire it.
The whole thing fits in thirty minutes once a team is used to it, and it scales down to a single desk conversation when that is all you need.
