The fields of architecture, software development, and gaming design share a common characteristic: they all undergo a process that involves the expression of multiple viewpoints. Although each field has general guidelines to follow, teams must constantly check and compare design ideas as well as the actions of their colleagues.

The Design Review meeting is a crucial moment in this process, where all stakeholders participate in an open discussion about the progress of the design and whether it aligns with the original goal. In this post, we will outline the key aspects of these meetings and describe the essential points that must be addressed in their records.

A product design review is a phase during the development process of a specific product in which you assess the design against criteria.

Design reviews happen at several stages of the product development cycle and may be technical or formal. These review meetings can also be structured workshops or open discussions.

The design team may discuss the project's technical details during the design review process. It can also discuss formal aspects, depending on the nature of the design project.

For example, if you're an architecture firm, your team and stakeholders will discuss the formal design, materials, visual aspects, etcetera. The project's owner can explain what they expect regarding the design, and team members should take notes and modify their project according to the owner's thoughts.

Technical discussion is different from the above. Here experts and the design team will evaluate the solutions they adopted for design problems. For instance, we may need to use a steel beam to create a glass wall.

Is it the best solution to create the effect we seek?

In an exemplary design review, we determine the next step that workers and the team should take.

Source: Dilbert.com

We should remember that a design review meeting is the right moment to exchange points of view and ideas about the design process. In this sense, design teams and the process will be beneficial in the following ways.

Increases Engagement

Stakeholders, project managers, leaders, and team members want to know they can trust each other. Generally, they bring new ideas to solve a problem or to improve a current design. Facing any ideas leads to a better understanding of the problem and better solutions. This also benefits members since they know they can trust other professionals.

Make the Next Steps Clear

Design review meetings are crucial to understanding the steps the design process must follow from the early stage. When members provide feedback in discussions and share thoughts with other designers, they provide direction for the next design steps.

You should run a product design review with enough time to allow all members to discuss the project design. Below, we will enumerate the stages to build a good meeting that ensures good communication and collaboration. 

Hold Review Sessions at the Same Time Every Week

You should run each review session at the same time and in the same place. An effective design review must have the participation of all stakeholders that have a role in design decisions, so you must ask them what the right time for them is.

The best practice in this regard is surveying participants and asking them if they prefer a morning or evening session. Remember that the project owner's participation is sometimes critical, so you must also consider their time.

The design process evaluation must have consistency; then, you must also set a specific duration for the meeting. Thirty minutes or one hour is enough to understand the design approach, exchange perspectives, and agree on design changes.    

Choose a Neutral Moderator

This aspect is optional. Still, a facilitator or moderator can fulfill a crucial role during meetings since they can organize times for speaking, structure questions of the preliminary design review, take notes, track feedback, and more. This moderator may be a design evaluator, a project manager, or a lead designer who outlines the detected issues that need to be resolved in design projects.

Set the Rules of Engagement

In general design reviews, designers start providing background information on what they are currently working on, what tools are used to design solutions, what stage of the design process they are at, etc. This provides context to all attendees.

In this sense, establish rules to encourage questions. You can ask participants to ask a question and give 3o seconds to answer it. You can also use the "raise hand" method to order the presentation and discussion.   

Create the Final Document

Every comment that designers express should be recorded in a proper document. This record must happen after every design review session your team runs, i.e., after completing the first and the final design review.

Recording all the answers you get during the design review meeting is crucial to implement ideas in the next steps of the design process. A good way of maintaining the structure of the conference is to use a template that clearly outlines the elements and goals of the meeting. In this sense, having Microsoft Office is essential to create or edit a relevant document.

Here, on RoyalCDkeys, you can quickly get a reliable version of the Microsoft Office suite since we put at your disposal a copy of Microsoft Office 2021 Professional Plus Key Retail Global at €4,10.

This suite contains all the favorite apps of Microsoft, such as MS Word and Excel, which allows you to edit the template we share below.

Formal Design Review Agenda Template

This single-page template clearly outlines the primary points to consider when running a design review meeting. This provides five sections overview, background, design review, feedback review, and prioritization. This template is crucial to follow a structured agenda. In this sense, this template should comply with the following:

• Overview (5 min). You should explain the general agenda and questions.

• Background (15 min). Here designers share their prototypes, the design value, and KPIs to measure metrics.

• Design Review (15 min). Managers and designers share design aspects while other business members take notes.

• Feedback Review (5 min). Designers focus on feedback.

• Prioritization (5 min). Stakeholders discuss the next steps they should complete to improve the design.  

You can download this formal design review agenda template from Smartsheet.

Critical Design Review Checklist

This document is to perform a technical review and verify that data is correct and plans are working as your organization expects. It also works for any design project, not just technical, to ensure all features have been incorporated into the system. This document includes boxes for different criteria for several aspects of the technical review, for example, system implementation or project challenges. It also has a space for approval and evaluated signatures before starting new processes or moving forward with other objectives.

You can download this critical design review checklist from Smartsheet.   

Planning Design Review

This planning review template is perfect for a construction company that needs to clarify who is the responsibles for activities and the project design. It's a short document that will help you establish various site plan requirements, such as the architect's scale, location, size of existing structures, landscaping, etc. Finally, this file contains a section describing the design project's owner and applicant representative.

You can download this planning design review template from Sample.net.

Preparing and conducting a good design review meeting may be a challenge. For this reason, we're giving you some valuable pieces of advice. 

• Set a proper schedule for any participants. As mentioned above, all designers and stakeholders must participate in the building ideas process. Invite all incumbents at a time that everyone can assist.

• Encourage iteration. Create a collaborative and environmental space where your organization's team members can freely express their ideas. Let them know they can talk through their thoughts with confidence. Encouraging will lead to a significant improvement in terms of interaction and the final product.

• Commit to a final design. Every designer will tell you that when you develop a specific project, you never totally finish the design. A product is evolving all the time. There is always something to iterate or modify. But, anyway, you need to agree with other members when something is good enough.

• Do not use the word “critique.” Correct implementation of design reviews requires that participants openly discuss but not criticize the performance of other members. Remember that the main point of the meeting is to facilitate a conversation and get good conclusions from it.

• Check design ideas continuously against the original goal. Sometimes the work may get siloed. To avoid this, allow designers to hear what others are trying to achieve regarding the initial plan.   

A design process presents multiple challenges, such as agreeing on different points of view between all the parties involved, i.e., designers, project managers, owners, and leaders. Overcoming these difficulties requires determination, a profound knowledge of every part of the design, and reviewing the process occasionally.

In this article, we've mentioned the crucial stages and components to run a successful design review meeting and a document that will help you organize ideas. The shared templates suit most activities, such as engineering, designing, architecture, etc. Enhance your design project thanks to a design review meeting!