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?