I’ve been thinking more about how I review a design – both my own and someone else’s. So over the past couple days I’ve been writing down every question I’ve been asking when I look at a design-in-progress. Some of these I say out loud, some just go through my head, some are in person, others are posted to Basecamp or Campfire.
These are in no particular order, and I don’t ask all of them every time.
- What does it say?
- What does it mean?
- Is what it says and what it means the same thing?
- Do we want that?
- Why do we need to say that here?
- If you stopped reading here, what’s the message?
- What’s the take away after 8 seconds?
- How does this make you feel?
- What’s down below?
- How else can we say this?
- What’s memorable about this?
- What’s that for?
- Who needs to know that?
- Who needs to see that?
- How does that change behavior?
- What’s the payoff?
- What does someone know now that they didn’t know before?
- How does that work?
- Why is that worth a click?
- Is that worth scrolling?
- What’s the simpler version of this?
- Are we assuming too much?
- Why that order?
- Why would this make them choose that?
- What does a more polished version of this look like?
- Why would someone leave at this point?
- What’s missing?
- Why are we saying this twice?
- Is it worth pulling attention away from that?
- Does that make it clearer?
- What’s the obvious next step?
- How would someone know that?
- Would it matter if someone missed that?
- Does that make it easier or harder?
- Would this be better as a sentence or a picture?
- Where’s the verb?
- Why is that there?
- What matters here?
- What would happen if we got rid of that?
- Why isn’t that clear?
- Why is this better?
- How can we make this more obvious?
- What happens when this expands?
- If we got rid of this, does that still work?
- Is it obvious what happens next?
- What just happened?
- Where’s the idea?
- What problem is that solving?
- How does this change someone’s mind?
- What makes this a must have?