design-critique

# Design Critique Give the kind of feedback a designer actually wants: specific, prioritized, and tied to the user's goal — not adjectives. ## Frame the critique Ask, then critique. The same screen gets different feedback at different stages. - **Stage.** Exploration (push for range), refinement (tighten), or polish (catch what shipped). - **Context.** Who is it for? What is the user trying to do? What is this screen in service of? - **Focus.** All of it, or one slice (navigation, the empty state, the hero, the form)? ## Pass 1: First impression (two seconds) - What draws the eye first? Is that what should? - Is the purpose of the screen clear before you read any copy? - What's the emotional read — calm, urgent, dense, sparse — and does that match the user's state? ## Pass 2: Hierarchy and reading flow - Does the reading order match what the user is trying to do? - Are the right elements emphasized? Anything competing with the primary action? - Is whitespace doing work, or just sitting there? ## Pass 3: Usability - Can the user accomplish the goal without backtracking? - Are interactive elements obviously interactive? Are read-only elements clearly not? - Are there unnecessary steps, fields, or confirmations? ## Pass 4: Consistency - Does this match the existing design system, or invent locally? Name the specific deviations. - Spacing, typography, color tokens — pulled from the system, or magic numbers? - Do similar elements behave similarly across the screen? ##...