Redesigning the Remote Critique Process

By Rochelle Dai, Sienna Gonzalez, Morgan Creek, and Gennifer Hom

Video by Rochelle Dai

“I don’t feel very connected to my professor and peers…We can hide behind our screens.” — Student

“It feels awkward sitting there in silence, especially when my camera is on while waiting for at least one person to give me a critique.” —Student

“Students never read the written critiques and there is no change in work. It is a wasted opportunity.” —Design Professor

Affinity mapping exercise done through Figma

“More people can contribute by typing in the chat. It’s not as nerve wracking as speaking in front of everyone.” — Student

“I dislike that people just mute themselves and turn their cameras off.” — Student

“It’s a lot quicker because we do it in breakout sessions and get 1-on-1 critiques with the professor.” — Student

“It would be great if professors had a time limit because these design critiques take way too long.” — Student

“It’s in written form so you can easily refer back to them and keep them in your notes.” — Student

“It can take more […]. I have to type things out and circle them.”—Student

Examples of a few sketches we did to solve some of the problems from our data and brainstorming

Before Critique

“I’m not sure where to look or what to do when I see this screen?”—User

High fidelity prototype of the user flow for entering a critique session

During Critique

“It feels awkward sitting there in silence, especially when my camera is on while waiting for at least one person to give me a critique.”

First iteration of the emotes interaction during our low fidelity prototype phase

“I would feel bad if emotes were visible to everyone. I would compare myself to other students it would and make me subconscious of my work.”—User

Second iteration of our emotes feature after attempting to address user feedback

“I saw the emotes as a reaction tool and it wasn’t transparent to me that I can click and drag them as stickers.”—User

Final iteration of the emotes feature

After Critique

Low fidelity prototype of what the final documentation of feedback could look like

“What if there are multiple annotations in the same area?”—User

Final Product

Reflection

Conclusion

--

--

We’re a student-run design consultancy @ UC Davis!

Get the Medium app

A button that says 'Download on the App Store', and if clicked it will lead you to the iOS App store
A button that says 'Get it on, Google Play', and if clicked it will lead you to the Google Play store