Design feedback and critique meetings

To get started quickly, use our template. The GIF below shows you how to access templates:

If you’re a free user, prefer to build your own meeting project from scratch, or want general best practices for Asana projects, get started with these project creation instructions.

Tips to have a more effective critique meeting

Now that you’ve built your project, these tips will help you run effective meetings.

The steps below address critique meetings specifically, but the framework can be adapted for other feedback processes. Simply create a project for designers to add their work to whenever it needs to be reviewed or approved and follow the steps below.

1. Assign a teammate to manage the meeting agenda

Meetings are most effective when there’s a clear agenda, easy access to materials, and enough time allocated to cover them. If a design manager, producer, or other teammate is always responsible for running the meeting, make them the project owner. If not, assign this role on a rotating basis.

The project owner will be responsible for ensuring that there are items on the critique meeting agenda, assets are attached, and there’s reasonable time to cover them.

To make sure no one forgets to add work to be critiqued to the agenda, create a recurring reminder task, and assign them copies of the task.

2. Add existing tasks to the agenda

To save time and keep the context clear, have designers/creators add existing tasks with their design work to the agenda. To store a task in multiple projects:

1. Navigate to the task in Asana.
2. Type Tab + P.
3. Type the name of the additional project(s) you want to add it to. Press Enter.
4. Your task will be stored in multiple projects, while remaining a singular task.

Now you can easily access working files during the meeting and track feedback in the same place to keep it actionable.

Tips for managing feedback effectively

Try these tips to make it faster and easier to give and receive feedback during design critiques:

1. Keep reviewers’ feedback during the meeting actionable and contextual

Feedback should be contextual, clear, and accessible in one place. Otherwise creators might return to their work and feel confused or frustrated about what’s expected of them.

To prevent this, use proofing annotations to track feedback directly on the asset, (or use task comments to capture them.) This can be done by a note-taker during your critique meeting, or by a reviewer on their own. Proofing gives you a singular, actionable record of feedback in context with the image for designers to reference and finish their work strong.

Now the creator can return to their work with a clear idea of what feedback they need to consider. Once they’ve incorporated the feedback (or not) they can comment about what decisions they made and why so reviewers know they were heard.

2. Hit deadlines with clearer reviews and approvals

Being able to provide and incorporate feedback more easily can be the difference between an OK design and crafting truly compelling imagery. Instead, follow these steps to move work through approvals clearly and quickly:

1. Add project rules so that tasks automatically get assigned to the right people, completed, or moved to different project sections as they progress.
2. Use custom fields notifications to keep stakeholders in the loop about progress. They’ll get notified when fields are updated from “Feedback needed” to "Approved," for example.

3. Keep feedback handy while working on the design

Once you’ve gotten feedback, referencing it alongside your work can slow you down if you have to print it out or go back and forth between apps and screens. If you’re working in an Adobe Photoshop CC, Illustrator CC, or InDesign CC app, you can use our integration to pull the feedback task directly into the program you’re working in to speed things up.