For most of last year I ran a weekly design critique across four product teams. About thirty designers, forty minutes per session, every Thursday. I kept notes the whole time. Here's what I'd put on the wall if I were starting over.
Lessons 1–6: format
1. The presenter never speaks first. Whoever is presenting stays quiet for the first sixty seconds while the room reads the work. That single rule changed our crits more than any other change.
2. "What's the question you're bringing?" beats "What did you make?" Critiques are not show-and-tell. They are answerable.
3. Limit live screen-sharing. Send the link an hour before. The crit is for the discussion, not the page-load.
4. Two-minute timer on each piece of feedback. Long monologues kill the room.
5. Senior designers speak last. The juniors will reflexively defer to whoever spoke first, every time.
6. End with a written summary, not a vibe.