Design Community Engagement

🤦🏻 “How We Run Design Critiques at Figma” (https://lnkd.in/eERQmRnY), an honest case study by Noah Levin with helpful techniques and templates to run more effective design critiques ↓ 🚫 Most critiques are an avalanche of unstructured opinions. ✅ Good critiques are inspiring, and give you a plan of action. ✅ Critiques work best with 2–6 people in the room. ✅ Explain the problem before showing any work. ✅ Reiterate previous findings, decisions and research. ✅ Explain how far you are: 30%, 60% or 90% done. ✅ Explain what kind of feedback you are looking for. ✅ No Keynote/Powerpoint: Figma link + Observation mode. ✅ Assign a note-taker to capture key points (Google Doc). ✅ Show what you want to show: feedback is shaped by that. 🚀 Critique formats: 🎡 Round-the-room: everyone voices their feedback (2min / person). 🍿 Popcorn: freeform comments for flowing conversation. 🥁 Jams: for early explorations with brainstorms, group sketching. 🫱🏻🫲🏾 Pair design: for deep collaboration on a problem (small groups). 🤫 Silent critiques: for a large volume of written, structured feedback. 📋 Paper print-out: for complex flows and reviewing more at once. 📣 FYI critiques: for sharing context and invite feedback later. Design critiques are about applying critical thinking. It’s about how well a current iteration of design does what it’s trying to do. However, designers alone often don’t have the full picture. Don’t necessarily reserve critiques to design teams only: invite developers and stakeholders and PMs for early feedback. Don’t ask what people think — ask how well the design tackles a specific problem. And probably the most important thing is to enable a flowing conversations. Invite everyone to ask, to doubt, to scrutinize, but stay on point and gather structured feedback: that’s when good critiques emerge. Useful resources: Practical Design Critique Guide, by Darrin Henein https://lnkd.in/ey_cGKuc Mastering Design Critiques, by Jonny Czar https://lnkd.in/e_BYwNwf Anti-Behavior in Design Critiques, and How To Handle Them, by Ben Crothers https://lnkd.in/e4UrpsPs --- ⛵ Figma and Miro Templates Design Critique Meetings Guide (Figma), by Overflow https://lnkd.in/dE85MUAK Design Critique Template (Figma), by Janus Tiu https://lnkd.in/dCYp2MSY Design Critique Meeting (Figma), by Rodrigo Javier Peña https://lnkd.in/dP_8pCug Design Critique Playground Template (Miro), by Miroslava Jovicic https://lnkd.in/eryJShRd #ux #design

Every proposal I've reviewed promises "community participation in monitoring." Almost none deliver it. The language is everywhere. "Beneficiaries will be actively involved in the M&E process." "Community feedback will inform program adaptation." "Participatory approaches will ensure accountability to affected populations." Then implementation starts. And here's what actually happens: The M&E team designs the tools. The M&E team defines the indicators. The M&E team collects the data. Communities answer the questions they're given. The results go to the donor. At no point did a community member influence what was measured, how it was interpreted, or what changed because of it. After 20 years in this field, I've come to an uncomfortable conclusion: most participatory M&E in development is participation in name only. Here are 5 signs your participatory M&E is actually extractive: 1️⃣ Communities provide data but never see the results. If the findings travel upward to the donor but never travel back to the people who provided them, that's extraction. 2️⃣ The indicators were set before any community consultation. If communities are asked to provide data against definitions they had no role in shaping, they're data sources, not participants. 3️⃣ No program decision has changed because of community input. Participation without influence is theater. If community feedback sits in an annex and never reaches a decision-maker, the process serves the report, not the people. 4️⃣ The same questions are asked quarter after quarter with no visible response. Communities are perceptive. When they see that nothing changes despite their input, participation fatigue sets in. Attendance drops. Trust erodes. 5️⃣ There's no budget line for feedback to communities. Translation, accessible summaries, community meetings to share findings, if these aren't budgeted, participation was never the real intention. Here's what programs that do it well look like: ✅ They share findings with communities within 30 days. ✅ They track which decisions changed because of community feedback. ✅ They let communities define what "success" means in their context. ✅ And they treat downward accountability as seriously as upward reporting. Participatory M&E was designed to shift power. In most programs, it hasn't shifted anything except the workload onto communities who give their time and get nothing back. Most M&E systems are accountable upward to donors. Very few are accountable downward to communities. Something needs to be changed. Does community feedback actually influence decisions in your program? #MonitoringAndEvaluation #MEL #ParticipatoryME #Accountability #InternationalDevelopment #CommunityEngagement #AdaptiveManagement

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐰𝐢𝐧𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐢𝐧𝐟𝐫𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐮𝐜𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐥𝐲-𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐠𝐞 𝐀𝐈 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐮𝐩𝐬 — 𝐏𝐚𝐫𝐭 𝟏/5: 𝐃𝐞𝐬𝐢𝐠𝐧 𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐧𝐞𝐫𝐬. I keep getting asked: what separates the AI startups that ship a great product in 3 months from those that are still iterating on a prototype after a year? It is not the model. It is not the funding. It is the operating infrastructure that the team builds around itself from day one. This is a 5-part series on the five things that matter most. Starting with the one that everything else depends on — design partners. 𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐚 𝐝𝐞𝐬𝐢𝐠𝐧 𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐧𝐞𝐫 𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐮𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲 𝐢𝐬. Not a logo on a slide. Not "we are in conversations with." A design partner is a company that uses your product in real work every week and gives you honest feedback. You need 3-5 of them. Not 20. Not 1. 𝐇𝐨𝐰 𝐭𝐨 𝐩𝐢𝐜𝐤 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐦 1. The company has the exact pain your product addresses — not adjacent pain, not theoretical pain, but a person inside that company losing hours every week to the problem you solve. 2. They are willing to tolerate early product challenges. This means they care enough about the problem that a rough v1 is still better than what they have today. If the pain is not acute enough for them to work through bugs and missing features, they are not the right partner. 3. There is a champion inside. One person who will spend time with your team — weekly calls, screen shares, Slack messages when something breaks. This person is your product oracle. They know the workflow better than you ever will. Without a champion, the partnership dies after the first demo. 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐩𝐚𝐭𝐡 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐝𝐞𝐬𝐢𝐠𝐧 𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐧𝐞𝐫 𝐭𝐨 𝐩𝐚𝐲𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐜𝐮𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐫. The design partner phase should last 2-3 months, not longer. In that window, you are iterating daily on their real workflow. By month 3, the product should be good enough that the conversation shifts from "can you try this?" to "what would you pay for this?" If it does not shift, you either have the wrong partner or the wrong product. It is fine to offer a deep discount in year one — design partners are giving you their time, their workflow, and their trust. That has real value. But by year two, you want them paying the normal price. The best founders I work with convert 60-80% of their design partners into paying customers. That conversion rate tells you everything about whether the product is real. It also gives you your first case studies, your first references, and your first ARR — all before you spend a dollar on sales and marketing. 𝐈𝐌𝐏𝐎𝐑𝐓𝐀𝐍𝐓: If you are an early-stage AI founder and you do not yet have 3-5 design partners using your product weekly, that is the single highest-leverage thing you can work on right now. Design partners are the foundation. Get that right, and the rest of the infrastructure has something solid to stand on.

How often do we design with people, instead of for them? It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that creativity is something only designers hold the key to. But when we pause and engage with communities, we realize something powerful: Creativity thrives within the community itself—it just needs the right conditions to flourish. Take, for example, the Collective Action Toolkit (CAT) by Frog. It’s not just a tool; it’s a framework that empowers communities to solve problems by tapping into their collective strength. Through a series of activities—like clarifying goals and imagining new ideas—small groups around the world have used this toolkit to not only share their thoughts but to take decisive action that addresses their concerns. The beauty of this approach is in its adaptability. It’s not a one-size-fits-all model. Each group can mould it to fit their unique needs, ensuring that everyone’s voice is heard and valued. But collaboration, as we know, isn’t always easy. There’s often discomfort, sometimes even conflict, when differing ideas meet. Yet, as designers, navigating these challenges is where true progress happens. As Otto Scharmer and Peter Senge, leaders in organizational development, have shown, it's in this space of tension that new solutions are born. A recent contribution from @Design Impact offers a set of guiding principles for designers to keep in mind when working with communities. One of these, “Value me for who I am, not who I’m told to be,” resonates deeply. It’s a reminder that behind every design is a real person, with history, emotions, and passions. When we acknowledge that, we move beyond simply gathering feedback—we tap into real leadership within the community. At the end of the day, Social innovation isn’t just about creating a product or service. It’s about co-creating, about building alongside communities rather than handing down solutions. It’s about fostering a space where everyone’s creativity can shine, and where long-term, sustainable change is possible. Have you been part of a design process that values community leadership? What challenges—and opportunities—did you encounter along the way?

Insta360 × Arian Teo is proof that long-term creator partnerships outperform one-off posts. Insta360 didn’t just collaborate with Arian once and move on. They kept coming back. And that consistency matters. Arian is known for a very distinct creative language: anime-style visuals, unexpected angles, fast transitions that feel impossible at first glance. By partnering with someone who has such a recognizable direction, Insta360 sends a clear signal to the market: these cameras are built for creators who think differently. Why this works: → Repeated collaborations lock the brand into Arian’s visual identity. → Insta360 becomes the tool for highly creative, experimental shooting styles. → One-off posts introduce. Long-term partnerships define. If Insta360 had treated Arian as a single campaign asset, this message wouldn’t land nearly as clearly. Consistency turns collaboration into positioning. Long-term creator partnerships don’t just drive performance. They build brand meaning. When you align with creators who have a strong, consistent voice and give that relationship time to mature, your product stops being featured and starts being understood. Curious which other brands are getting long-term creator partnerships right lately?

Innovation doesn’t happen in isolation It happens when teams, disciplines and companies decide to build real relationships—the kind that push boundaries instead of protecting comfort zones That’s why the story of IDEA Design Mindset in Spain stands out A real reminder of the power of collaboration done right IDEA Design started as a product-development studio in Murcia with a clear aim: blend strategy, engineering and design into solutions that genuinely solve problems Their work now spans medical devices, industrial design, packaging, and technical product development What matters isn’t just the portfolio—it’s how they operate They partner deeply, stay close to customer challenges, and co-create instead of designing in a vacuum That relationship-first mindset is why their journey has been packed with global recognition: iF Design Awards in the Medicine/Health category New York Product Design Awards Red Dot and BIG SEE accolades across multiple years Awards don’t matter on their own What matters is why they’ve won them: because they build trust with clients, learn the nuances of the industries they serve, and create long-term engagement instead of transactional output In healthcare and medtech—where risk is high, timelines are tight, and user experience is mission-critical—this approach isn’t optional It’s the difference between shipping a product and shaping a market Their work with companies like INBENTUS Medical Technology, developing rugged field-ready ventilators, is the perfect example That type of device doesn’t happen without tight collaboration between designers, engineers, clinicians and manufacturers. It takes aligned teams, clear communication and shared accountability It’s a demonstration of how the right relationships multiply capability And that’s the point worth highlighting IDEA Design’s journey is proof that strong partnerships drive stronger outcomes. Looking ahead, their future will be shaped by the same principles that built their past: Deep collaboration with clients Cross-functional development A commitment to understanding needs before solving them Good People making a difference, sounds so simple But it's the simple things people miss, and that really make a difference!

🎯 Yesterday’s YPO Germany–Switzerland–Austria Day Chair training turned big ideas into how we actually do it. Amazing insights that make it look so easy but are super hard to execute like a pro. Plus these are frameworks you can (and should) use for any meeting, company event or client workshop. What landed for me: 🪑 The Three-Legged Stool (make every event stand): 📚 Learning — design for actionable takeaways (not keynotes-for-show) 🤝 Networking — engineer peer exchange (tables, rotations, F2F moments) 🎯 Experiencing — offsites/socials that anchor memory & momentum 🧭 E-CODE in practice (not on a slide): 👥 Engage Peers: create a safe haven; use member expertise & peer-to-peer formats 💥 Compel Content: clear outcomes, diverse voices, thought-provoking activities 🧠 Open Minds: multi-sensory, whole-person learning; challenge assumptions 🏁 Deliver Value: know the audience; exceed expectations in planning & follow-through 🌟 Extraordinary Resources: the right facilitators, venues, and tools to lift the bar 🛠️ Sell the event like a pro (the 60-sec Elevator Pitch): ❌ Don’t speak too fast / cram 15 minutes into 1 ❌ Ditch jargon & acronyms—make it understandable ✅ Practice until conversational (human > robotic) ✅ Actually use the pitch to do targeted follow-ups 🔁 Close the loop (so learning compounds): ✚/Δ Plus/Delta at the end → what worked / what to improve 🧪 Separate content feedback from logistics → cleaner signal for next time Events aren’t “nice to have” — they’re our engagement engine for peer-to-peer exchange and new ideas. Proud of this learning group and grateful for an excellent facilitation. 👥 I’ll tag our facilitator and the team on the photo. 👉 Question: What’s one detail you’ve used to turn a good event into a transformational one? #YPO #GSA #Learning #EventDesign #ECODE #Community #BetterLeadersThroughLifelongLearning

I've designed and delivered over 200+ events. Roundtables of 18. Conventions of a thousand. The most consistent failure mode I've seen has nothing to do with venue, speakers, or production. It's simpler and more painful than that. The event was designed to impress the room. Not to move anyone in it. Three months after the best-looking events I've attended, the tangible outcomes were a photo gallery and a LinkedIn spike. No new conversations opened. No existing ones advanced. Nobody walked out with a reason to call anyone. The event worked as theatre. It failed as business development. There's a question I ask before designing any event now. Not "who should we invite?" Not "what's the theme?" It's this: what do you want a specific attendee to do differently the morning after? If you can't answer that for each audience segment in the room - you're building an energy event. Energy dissipates. It feels like success on the night and leaves nothing by Tuesday. Momentum is different. Momentum is built when the format, the seating, the facilitated discussions, the follow-up - every design choice - is made in service of that one question. The most valuable 20 minutes of any well-designed event is never the keynote. It's the unstructured time that has been deliberately architected - where the right two people are in proximity, with a shared context and a reason to speak. Genuinely curious - what's the best-designed event you've attended in terms of creating real outcomes? What made it work? #EventMarketing #ExperientialMarketing #B2BMarketing #ClientEngagement #CXO #DemandGeneration #MarketingLeadership

💡SQUACK Design Critique Framework It's nearly impossible to design a solid product in a vacuum—you always need feedback from others. Yet, giving and receiving feedback are often the most challenging parts of the design process. Without a clear framework, design review sessions can easily devolve into unproductive noise or, worse, feel like a lynching. SQUACK, proposed by UX coach Julie Jensen (https://lnkd.in/dCA8CTHc), is a structured framework that helps provide constructive and organized design feedback. Each letter represents a specific type of comment: 🟠 S (Suggestion) Personal ideas or preferences that may not be backed by data but offer alternative approaches. 🟠 Q (Question) Points of confusion or requests for clarification (e.g., "Why did you decide to use this component in the first place?"). 🟠 U (User Signal) Feedback grounded in data, user research, or real user behavior. It's objective feedback, not subjective opinions. 🟠 A (Accident) Minor mistakes like typos, alignment issues, or numerical errors can cause friction or misunderstanding. 🟠 C (Critical) Major concerns that present risks (business, usability, technical). These require further attention or redesign. 🟠 K (Kudos) Praise for successful elements or well-executed design choices. This is important for morale and motivation. ✅ Benefits of using SQUACK Design critique session participants can use initials (e.g., S, Q, C) to label their comments and even combine types (e.g., "Q+S") when providing feedback. This helps improve clarity & context and leads to better outcomes: ✔ Helps categorize feedback into distinct categories and separate subjective opinions from facts. ✔ Makes critique sessions more inclusive, especially for quieter participants. ✔ Encourages actionable and balanced feedback (not just what's wrong with design but also what's good about it). 🖼️ SQUACK example by Ya-Ching #UX #uxdesign #productdesign #design

If people can’t see themselves in the outcome, they won’t show up for the process. Communities stop turning up when the outcomes never reflect them. Engagement isn’t about how many people attend, it’s about whether their voices have been heard and the subsequent actions taken thereon. When outcomes feel corporate, generic, or pre-decided, people walk away. But when they recognise their words, their ideas, and their priorities in the final product, something changes. Trust deepens. Ownership grows. People engage more - not because they were asked to, but because it now belongs to them. That’s the difference between consultation and co-design.