UX reviews: a template for success
How to structure your next UX review to get actionable feedback — plus a Figma template to use
Two fundamental aspects of working on distributed product teams are sharing context and seeking feedback on your work. In order to achieve alignment and rally the team around a common set of goals, it’s important that you structure and deliver your thoughts clearly and intentionally. This will ensure your audience gains the appropriate amount of context so they can provide you with actionable feedback.
In this article, I will share a structure that I’ve found to be useful when preparing for a UX review. There’s also a Figma template on our Community profile that accompanies this blog post to help you fully prepare for your next review.
What is a UX review?
A UX review is a stakeholder check-in where the team presents a recommended experience they’re looking to move forward with. This is a time to explain rationale, field any open questions, and gather specific feedback that may need to be addressed before moving forward. UX reviews differ from more traditional design reviews in that stakeholders from various disciplines and teams can be invited to participate and provide feedback once the team has an idea for a recommended direction.
There are many scenarios in which a team could benefit from a UX review. Perhaps the team is looking for stakeholder input on a contentious topic that has been difficult to resolve. Or, when the team is confident in their recommended approach and are looking to gut-check on their considerations and rationale. UX reviews are helpful when you are looking for specific feedback for the goal you’re trying to achieve.
How to prepare for a UX review
Who should be involved?
It’s incredibly important to consider your audience when preparing for a UX review. Who in your organization is a stakeholder within your product area that you would want to provide UX feedback? Are there technical considerations which impact your UX decisions? Does your UX shift the product strategy or impact another team’s work? Your invite list should be limited to your UX team (research, content, design, FED) and key decision makers or representatives (leads or directors from UX, project management, engineering, data) from areas which may be impacted.
Try to keep the attendee list low in order to ensure everyone has a chance to provide feedback without prolonging the length of the review. Keep in mind that you can always share a recording if you are presenting via video call, and/or share action items with others after the meeting ends.
Now you know who to invite, let’s look at how to structure your UX review.
UX review structure
Introduction
Keep this short and sweet. Think of this as an overview of who you are, the team you’re a part of, and the topic of what you’ll be covering in your review.
Feedback
Without being explicit about what feedback you are, and are not looking for, things can easily get off track. For instance, if the content design is still being worked on, it’s beneficial to call this out ahead of time so the feedback you receive is focused. In the event that a question gets asked that is off topic, or starts to derail the conversation, you can politely remind attendees of the areas of feedback you’re looking for and ask for that particular discussion to be continued outside of the review time.
Context
You are the expert in your respective domain. Try to summarize the context of the problem you’re trying to solve so that the audience has a general understanding without getting too granular. As an example, some useful artifacts to help aid in problem definition could include Jobs to be Done, or “How might we…” statements.
Thinking
Before you get into showing any specific design or flows, explain to the audience how you approached thinking about the problem. What actors were considered when designing the proposed solution? Was there any research that was conducted or consulted that supports the problem, topic, or design being discussed? Were any specific UX principles used in guiding the decision making? All of these can help set the stage for the work you will be showing.
Show
Once the audience has context on the problem you’re solving and you’ve explained the thinking that went into your proposed solution it’s time to show the audience your recommended solution.
It can be helpful to walkthrough an end-to-end flow before fielding any questions. This way, the audience can get an understanding of the bigger picture before diving into specific feedback about individual screens, components, or content. Focus on showing your recommended UX direction first and be prepared to speak to why you feel this is the best direction. Make sure to have your explorations nearby in case suggestions come up that you may have already explored, but aren’t in favor of. If you’re only showing a few screens or states of a component, you can simply add them to the presentation slides. If what you’re showing is more of a complex flow, you can include link(s) to a separate document or prototype.
Notes
This is a dedicated area where you can assign a notetaker to capture notes throughout the meeting. This will ensure you can focus on presenting and answering questions without needing to write down every question or piece of feedback that arises. These notes will help you assemble a list of action items and next steps that can be taken after the review. It will also allow you to explain why you may intentionally choose not to address certain feedback.
Next steps
Summarize all of the next steps that you and the team will address as part of the feedback that was received during the review. These next steps should be shared with the attendee list and any other individuals who may be interested shortly after the review. It will help level-set the audience on expectations and make sure everyone is clear on the path forward. It’s worth noting that not all feedback needs to be addressed. It is up to you and the team to make a judgment call on what can be actioned on and what may need more clarification or investigation.
Bonus: Make it asynchronous
If you work on a distributed team in various parts of the world, scheduling a time that works for everyone can be a challenge. Luckily, this structure works really well if it is pre-recorded. You could record audio and/or video of you walking the audience through the context and recommended UX direction before directing them to write their own notes and feedback in a shared document (perhaps in Figma comments, or a Google doc).
If there is a significant amount of context to be shared with the audience, it can even be helpful to record a pre-read which covers the context portion before a UX review happens. It will allow invitees to prepare for the meeting ahead of time and even come prepared with questions.
I recently did exactly this while working on the onboarding UX for Shopify Inbox. Since there were two existing products which were coming together under one new product name, I wanted attendees to have context on the before and after experience of onboarding. This context was incredibly important for attendees, but talking about it during the UX review would’ve taken longer and taken time away from the feedback we were looking for.
UX reviews help you become a better designer
Practice makes progress. Over time, you will build up experience with storytelling and improve your confidence when presenting your solutions. By including attendees that have a diverse set of roles and experiences you’ll also begin to broaden your understanding of the type of feedback you receive, which will ultimately help you design better solutions for the next review.
UX reviews are a really great way to present your work, explain and defend rationale, and obtain valuable feedback from stakeholders. By structuring your thoughts in a clear and cohesive manner you will set the team and yourself up for a successful review.
Do you have anything to add? I’d love to know what has worked well for you when reviewing your work with others. Let me know your thoughts on Twitter and make sure you check out the Figma Community template!
View the UX Review template on Shopify’s Figma Community profile ↗
