Bringing Critique back to Design
A lightning talk by Janice M. Cho
Critique is a common exercise in design schools and it is often remembered by those having experienced it as panic inducing, a place of judgement, and, very rarely, where you were acknowledged/confirmed, without criticism, about your hard work. No wonder we don’t have formal critique in the workplace and we’ve been suffering because of it.
The design practice needs to get better at showing work early and working through problems together and better - especially in an agile setting. When ideas and workflows become siloed and collaboration is indeed a requirement for successful products, how might we use time efficiently to give feedback, brainstorm ideas, educate developers + product managers, and pull ourselves out of a design hole? The answer is: Critique.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Janice M. Cho
Independent Designer & Consultant
Janice is a multi-disciplinary designer who specializes in using HCD to create new ways to enable innovation. With her background in Visual Arts and Human Development, she is always looking at the interaction of objects - whether they are digital, physical, or somewhere in between. She has dived deep into Human Centered Design methodologies and analyzes its intersectionality with UX, UI, Service Design, Architecture, etc. to think of new and creative ways it can be implemented in projects and everyday life.
Throughout her career, she has served start-ups, innovation teams, enterprise clients, the U.S. government, and artists. Her role throughout these experiences range from freelancing, think tanking, being in-house, and consulting. The organizations she's engaged with include non-profit spaces, for-profit businesses, and hybrid organizations.
Janice is also a published artist and her work has also been shown in spaces internationally. She utilizes the different mediums she challenges herself with as a means to better understand how new ideas are born and applies physical product principles to digital products on a regular basis.
