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Whats your company's method of collaboration and/or design critique between designers?

over 3 years ago from , Visual Experience Designer @ Gracious

Hi DN, For example, do you all work together on one project until completion? Or does every designer work on their own project? Do you critique each others work? When in the project do you check each others work for mistakes?

Our workflow is as following (design agency): There are 5 designers, who all work on their own project(s). For every project there is a (design) buddy. Who critiques the main designers work and checks for mistakes/errors/missing pages/color use/whatever. The main designer on the project delivers the design to the buddy upon completion per defined epic. After all epics are completed and approved by the buddy the completed design is delivered to the CXO.

Some problems we face with this workflow is that - it's very time consuming, especially when one designer is a buddy for multiple projects. - Switching between buddies occurs a lot, because of deadlines or some other valid reason. Which takes even more time for the new buddy to read in to the project to be able to give constructive criticism.

Very curious to see how this applies to your situation!

3 comments

  • Mark RedmanMark Redman, over 3 years ago

    Interesting concept. In my experience there are usually a few people on a project, including the customer who is approving or signing off designs, the feedback loop is pretty tight between everyone involved, and is usually on-going, but having a colleague (buddy) checking things over in some cases is a good idea.

    2 points
    • Dillen Verschoor, over 3 years ago

      Thanks Mark! Can I ask, at what stage does the project get delivered to the client for approval? Do you see them as part of the feedback loop early on or do you deliver an (internally) finished project for approval/feedback?

      0 points
      • Mark RedmanMark Redman, over 3 years ago

        Hi,

        It really depends on the relationship with the client and the size of the jobs, but approval is usually as soon as possible for each item, usually an artworker/designer will create something, it may get a second look before sending to the client.

        Larger teams will have both an internal and external review phases for each version.

        We have built a tool (MediaMarkup) that works for both small teams and is integrated into larger production tools, this supports multiple approval groups so can be used for internal and external review.

        see www.mediamarkup.com

        1 point