The Journey from Reviews to Design Jams: Smarter Process & Better UX Quality

The image shows something many designers can relate to: tweaking, experimenting, and hoping everything just turns out right.

Now imagine doing this again and again, not just to polish a design or presentation, but to build confidence in your design decisions.

And again, doing it across multiple internal products that directly affect each other.

Honestly… a bit scary, right? 🤔

It Wasn’t Just Me

At first, I thought I was the only one struggling to manage all these details while also trying to maintain some level of work-life balance. But over time, I realized something important. This wasn’t just me. It was something many people casually talked about, yet we never tried to improve.

The real turning point came when other teams began raising concerns that the UX team was taking too long to deliver designs.

That’s when the conversation started becoming more serious.

The Opportunity

Around the same time, our leadership team decided to prioritize initiatives to improve UX quality. Since I was already actively involved in improving processes, especially focusing on solutions for teams, this felt like the perfect opportunity.

I was chosen to lead the effort from the Sales Intelligence team, and it became the moment I had been waiting for to pitch my ideas on improving the review process.

If you’re curious about some of the earlier work around improving team processes, you can check out my article: **“Solving for Teams That Bring the Product to Life.”**

Understanding the Existing Process

In our team, design reviews were a mandatory step before any designer could hand over work to engineering. The intention behind this process was genuinely good.

The goals were to:

• Stay aware of what is happening across internal products
• Share work with peers
• Maintain design consistency
• Help designers get unstuck through feedback

In theory, it was meant to improve collaboration and quality. But in practice, things were a little different.

Listening First

Before suggesting any solutions, my first step was simple:

Never underestimate the power of simple conversations with peers.

Talk to the designers.

I started having casual conversations with designers who regularly participated in these review sessions to understand their experiences and frustrations. Once it became clear that this was a shared challenge across the team, we sent out a survey to gather more structured feedback.

The results were… not surprising.

The responses were flooded with feedback about improving the review process. What had started as a helpful initiative was now becoming a frustrating experience for many designers.

The Key Pain Points

1. Too Many Reviewers Everyone who joined the call automatically became a reviewer. That often meant too many opinions and conflicting suggestions.
2. Time Lost in Context Setting A large part of every session was spent just explaining the background and bringing everyone up to speed.
3. Extremely Time-Consuming Preparing presentations and sitting through long review calls made the process slow and exhausting.
4. The Bigger Impact What started as an internal UX initiative had slowly turned into a delivery bottleneck. Since reviews were mandatory before handoff to engineering, it also affected how quickly other teams could move forward.

It was clear that something needed to change.

The Idea That Changed Everything

Instead of making reviews longer or stricter, we asked a different question:

What if reviews felt less like presentations… and more like collaboration?

After several discussions and brainstorming sessions, a new idea started to take shape, and that’s how our journey from Reviews to Design Jams began.

Jam Session Action Plan

Team Culture

• Move from boring reviews to fun Design Jams that spark creativity and collaboration
• Decide faster and smarter with clear feedback, alignment, and less rework
• Own the process by contributing ideas, experimenting, and making reviews enjoyable

Designers

• Take ownership by selecting the right participants and clearly defining the session’s purpose, whether it’s for exploring, validating, or making decisions and choosing the appropriate format (Zoom, async Figma comments, or both).
• Set a strong context, clearly define the problem upfront, and use micro videos to align everyone quickly.
• Plan smarter, include buffers, and schedule ahead with stakeholders to ensure better, more thoughtful design outcomes.
• Embrace collaborating asynchronously to keep progress smooth and continuous.

Jammers

• Icebreakers to feel at ease.
• Prepare & appreciate the designer’s effort before the call.
• Collaborate asynchronously and reserve calls for key discussions & mainly decisions.
• Give actionable feedback that drives improvement.
• Reflect regularly to continuously improve the process.
• Provide targeted feedback to help designers strengthen their validation skills.
• Standardize components to reach 80%+ consistency. Consistency (%) = (correct instances ÷ total instances) x 100

High-Energy Design Jams

We started seeing consistent sign-ups from across the team, and soon enough, things got excitingly intense. We were running three jam sessions a week, with people joining across 3–5 time zones, fully engaged and bringing incredible energy.

Voices from the Jam: What Stood Out Most

And that’s been the biggest win.

A huge shoutout to everyone who participated, shared thoughtful feedback, and helped shape this into something special. You didn’t just improve the process, you turned review calls into a space where collaboration feels natural, ideas feel exciting, and work actually feels fun.

This isn’t just a better way to review design; this is a better way to build together. 🚀