Reviewing every screen without becoming the bottleneck
How written, teachable feedback let me stay in the work at Novo without slowing the team down.
At Novo I reviewed every screen before it shipped. People hear that and picture a gate. It wasn’t, mostly, and the difference was in how the feedback was written.
Written, not verbal
A review that lives in a call evaporates. A written note on the frame stays, gets re-read, and gets copied into the next design. Writing also forces me to be specific. “This feels off” is not feedback. “The secondary action is competing with the primary because they share weight and colour” is.
Teach the principle, not the pixel
If I only fix the spacing, I’ll fix it again next week. If I explain why the rhythm breaks here, the designer fixes the next ten screens without me.
Review early and small
Twenty minutes on a wireframe saves two days on a polished comp. I’d rather see three rough directions than one finished one.
Know when to step back
The goal of a player-coach is to make the team need you less for execution so they can use you more for the harder calls. If the same note hasn’t come up in a month, that part of the review is done.
Keep reading
More from the same notebook.
Which workflow is costing you the most right now?
Onboarding that leaks customers. An operations queue that still runs on phone calls. A design team that needs a lead. Tell me which one, and I’ll bring design, AI and twelve years of taking flows like that end to end.
Thirty minutes to start. You describe the product and what is slowing it down. I tell you honestly whether I’m the right person for it, and if not, who might be.