Yet how often do we hear, “Could you give me some feedback on this design I’ve been working on?” It’s likely to be the most requested activity, but we do little to get better at it. Good critique skills are to be revered, but many of us haven’t learned what it takes, putting our projects at risk and driving walls between team members.

Recently, I’ve been discussing critique skills with some clients and it reminded me of an article we published back in September 2008, What Goes into a Well-Done Critique. It’s an important topic that doesn’t get a lot of attention. So I thought it was worth a second look. After studying the practices of design teams, we noticed that there are specific elements always present in a well-performed critique. Today’s article describes what we’ve seen in our travels.

Read the article: What Goes into a Well-Done Critique.

Improving your critiquing skills is just one of the topics Dan Rubin will cover at the User Interface 15 Conference in November. His full-day workshop, Visual Design Essentials for Non-Designers, will show you techniques for creating an integrated visual design system that will simplify your job, while providing easy tools for selecting the right colors, fonts, and layouts. Learn more about his workshop and the 7 others at the UI15 conference site.

What elements do you think make a great critique? How has your team incorporated them into regular practice? We’d love to hear your stories and thoughts. Leave a comment on our Brain Sparks blog below.

Explore Dan’s workshop at this year’s conference. Register for UI15 by October 22 with promotion code BLOGPOST and get $400 off.

The article quickly became one of the most popular articles we’ve ever published. People love the fact that a small design change could be linked to a huge increase in revenues. It’s the ultimate ROI story.

Yet in our research at User Interface Engineering, we see these kinds of increases all the time. And $300 million isn’t anywhere close to the biggest.

In today’s UIEtips article, we look back at another article from 2009. Here, I talk about a design element whose income contribution is possibly 10 times larger. It’s a simple question on the Amazon site—one you’ve probably seen a thousand times—yet it is critical to the success of the business.

Unlike the previous story, where we worked on the project, this story comes from our research of Amazon, independent of any projects we’ve done for them. Therefore, our revenue projections are estimates this time. But even if we’re off by an order of magnitude, it’s still an impressive number that tells us how a well thought-out design can make a big difference.

Read today’s article, The Magic Behind Amazon’s 2.7 Billion Dollar Question.

Increasing the effectiveness of a design is exactly what we’re talking about at the UIE Web App Masters Tour. We still have stops in Philadelphia and Seattle. Learn more about the 9 Masters presenting in each city at www.UIETour.com.

Have you had any design changes that had a big impact on your organization’s bottom line? We’d love to hear your stories. Share your thoughts below.

Until May 21, register for Philadelphia or Seattle and get $100 off when you use the promotion code TOURBLOG. Learn more about the tour at www.UIETour.com

If we want to see how brand engagement works, we don’t have to look any further than the Cuisinart Popcorn Maker.

Williams-Sonoma is featuring this intriguingly designed popper on their site. It’s received 3.6 stars from the 25 reviewers. Only 9 (36%) of those reviewers gave it one, two, or three stars.

Amazon is selling the exact same popper. Yet their reviewers have a very different take:

In the case of Amazon’s site, 18 out of 27 (67%) reviewers rated the device with one or two stars.

Why did twice as many people rate the product positively on Williams-Sonoma’s site than on Amazon’s? The answer is clear from these two reviews:

On the Williams-Sonoma site, this reviewer had a bad experience, yet gave it three stars:

makes great popcorn when it works

I got this as a Christmas gift and my whole family all fell in love with it. We used it several times a week. After a few months the hot plate stopped heating. So back to the store it went with no questions asked and I brought another one home and it too broke after the 3rd use. Back to the store I went for an exchange. This popcorn popper is so good I don’t mind exchanging it for a new one. The customer service is so awesome at Williams-Sonoma!

On the Amazon site, this customer gave the device only one star, having had essentially the same experience:

Makes good (not great) popcorn – but I’ve been through 2 now and Customer Support STINKS

I gave this unit 1 star because in the course of a few of months I’ve had two now that have broken. Here’s how it works when it breaks: you call customer support, they give you attitude, grill you as if you’ve done something wrong, they charge you $10 to ship the replacement unit and then you have to ship the broken unit back – so ~$20 to get a replacement for something under warranty. What breaks? There are 3 main pieces to the unit: the plug-in base, the heating element, and the bowl. The heating element detaches from the base, a very nice feature, but after about a month on the first unit the handles and clip that attach to the base broke. After another couple of months on the replacement the heating element stopped heating.

That’s two people reporting essentially the same experience. Yet one felt is was substantially better than the other, because of the customer support of Williams-Sonoma.

From the folks at Gallup, we learn that one of the key components of brand engagement is integrity. Does the brand always treat me fairly? If a problem arises, can I count on the brand to reach a fair and satisfactory resolution?

In this case, the first customer felt that Williams-Sonoma took care of them and the Amazon customer felt that Cuisinart was doing a crappy job by charging $20 to get a replacement and having a poorly constructed unit.

When there’s high brand engagement, customers are willing to overlook problems and still feel good about the product or service. Williams-Sonoma takes good care of their customers, even the product is defectively designed, leading to higher engagement and the customer’s willingness to overlook problems.