A good critique provides clear, meaningful, and thorough feedback. It uses specific language and seeks to explain the thoughts behind the critique. A good critique does not need to be long, but it does need to accomplish the above.
When providing a critique, it can also be helpful to consider answering some specific questions. Sometimes these will be provided to you and sometimes you will need to formulate them on your own. But having a concrete question in mind can help structure your critique and considering how one might respond to them can help illustrate this.
For example, imagine answering the following question: Is the primary goal of this visualization clear?
We can imagine both good and bad responses to this:
| Bad critique: No. I was confused by it. |
Explanation: This critique is bad, because it does not actually convey any information to the person receiving it. The person reading this would have no idea what you found confusing or why, and so it is hard to think about how to refine their figure to address this problem. |
|---|---|
| Good critique: I was confused by the visualization, because it was unclear if I was supposed to be focusing on the overall values on the y-axis or the change in the values over time. |
Explanation: This is a good critique because it lets us understand why the critiquer found the object confusing. If the designer wanted to have one of these two aspects stand out, then they should think about how to improve that. If they want both aspects to be equally noticeable, then they can think about how to make that clear. |
Hopefully you can see that the difference between these examples is that one provided specific information that the designer could use to help think through their design, while the first doesn’t help at all. We know the critique was confused, but don’t know about what or why.
You can also see that a good critique needn’t be super long. The above good critique was a single sentence. Of course, if you want to provide more detail you can, but longer doesn’t mean better. A bad critique can very easily be long.:
| Bad critique: Hey there. Thanks for sharing the design. Unfortunately, I didn’t really like it. I kinda found it confusing. Like, when I looked at it, I didn’t really understand what I was supposed to be getting from it. It was just confusing, I guess. |
Explanation: This is bad for the same reason as above: there is no specific information. The writer just repeated “I was confused” a bunch. So, this is unhelpful and not a good critique. |
|---|
One thing to consider is that, even though we are trying to be specific, we are not trying to be prescriptive. You are not attempting to control the designer, just to help them understand how you personally experienced the design. Thus, while advice and suggestions are very welcome and valuable, commands are not.
| Bad critique: Hey, I found your graph a bit confusing, because I didn’t know if I was supposed to focus on the total values or the change in values over time. You need to plot the y-axis in relative units, so that people don’t ask questions about the absolute values. That will solve the problem. |
Explanation: This is bad because it is offering a single choice: do this thing that is in my mind. However, there are probably MANY options that would solve this perceived problem, and so it is better to offer your ideas as suggestions. Additionally, you don’t actually know what the designer is trying to do, so you may be telling them to solve a problem they don’t actually have. |
|---|---|
| Good critique: Hey, I found your graph a bit confusing, because I didn’t know if I was supposed to focus on the total values or the change in values over time. If you want to have people focus on the changes over time, you might consider using a relative y-axis, as that eliminates the total values. However, if you want people focusing on the total values, then maybe you could directly label the points with those numbers. |
Explanation: This doesn’t assume what the designer was trying to do, and so tries to offer a few suggestions, rather than prescribe a solution. |
If you can’t think of suggestions, you can still supply good critiques, by trying to explain your state of mind. You can explain what you were thinking, and that can provide useful information to the person who can decide what they want to change.
| Good critique: Hey, I found your graph a bit confusing, because I didn’t know if I was supposed to focus on the total values or the change in values over time. I think this was because the total values on the y-axis were something I found myself drawn to, because the numbers were so large. |
Explanation: This is also good. While it doesn’t supply a suggestion, it does give more information on the state of mind of the critiquer. This helps the person receiving this critique at least think about how they might adjust in response to it. |
Hopefully you can see that a good critique gives an opinion, attempts to provide specifics about this opinion, communicates your state of mind, and/or offers suggestions. The overall goal is to help the person you are writing to understand how you experienced the design, so that they can decide if their intent is being realized.
Critiques are not arguments #
While it may be true that Everything’s an argument, what I mean is that a critique is not an argument you should be trying to win. Your critique is just your opinion. You are not the person making the product. You do not have ultimate control over what is produced.$^\dagger$ Thus, you don’t need to try to convince them you are correct. Instead, simply try to provide the best feedback you can, and then leave it to the designer to implement your suggestions, ignore them, or ask for clarifications.
$^\dagger$Obviously there are situations where you have much more influence, such as when you are providing feedback on a piece you are paying for. In such cases, you might expect that your opinions will be followed. However, in such a case I would argue that you are not so much providing a critique as establishing the requirements or constraints for the piece. To me, a critique is a much less rigid sort of feedback.