Design & UX · master area
UX Review
Using the feature as the named person would, with the brief beside you — one of the three confirmations in The Review, alongside PO and QA. Held before the release gate.
Owners: Designer Phase it lives in: How We Build (Volume IV) The corpus principle this enacts: Three confirmations, three dimensions — each checking a different chain level.
Where it lives in the chain
- How We Build · The Review — the canon: three confirmations (PO, QA, Designer)
- How We Build · Code review as chain verification — the trace question
How to do this
- Related craft — Exploratory Testing — the QA half
- Related practice — Release gate — UX review is a gate item, not an afterthought
What a UX review session looks like
The designer opens the feature in the staging environment with the Feature Brief beside them. They walk the happy path as Gal would, narrating: "I'm here because… I'm about to do… I expect…" They check:
- Does the flow match the wireframe? Frame for frame, state for state.
- Does the copy match content design? Same words as the observation note used.
- Do the interactions match the annotations? Hover, focus, transitions, error states.
- Do the edges and errors still feel like the same product? Or do they look like a different team built them?
A UX review that produces "looks great, ship it" without naming a state is not a review. A UX review that names one thing to fix and one thing to keep doing is one. The designer's confirmation is the third leg of the trio's review — without it, the team is approving on two legs.
Related crafts
- Exploratory Testing
- Release Gate Checklist
- User Testing / Usability — the heavier version of the same instinct