# Prompting For Design Critique Instead Of Design Praise

> Ask what a user will fail to do, not whether it looks good.

- **Author:** [Lucas Oliveira (@lucas_oliveira)](https://www.promptabide.com/lucas_oliveira)
- **Published:** 2026-07-16
- **Updated:** 2026-08-22
- **Tags:** `design`, `ux`, `critique`, `product`
- **Views:** 13594
- **Likes:** 256

## Prompt

```
Show a model a screenshot and ask what it thinks, and you get compliments. "Clean, modern, good use of whitespace." Useless.

Ask this instead:

"Here is a screenshot of [screen]. The primary task is [task].

1. What will a first-time user try to click first, and is that right?
2. What information do they need for this task that is not on screen?
3. What is competing with the primary action for attention?
4. Where would this break — long names, empty state, a slow network, 320px wide?
5. What would you cut?"

Question 5 gets the best answers, because it forces a ranking. Everything on the screen has a defender until you make something leave.

Q4 is where I have got the most concrete wins — an empty state nobody had designed, a two-line product name that broke the card grid.
```

## Output

*Produced by Claude · claude-opus-4.*

```
1. They will click the large "Explore" card — but the primary task is publishing, and that is a text link in the header.
2. No indication of who can see a draft. That is the main hesitation before publishing.
3. The onboarding banner and the primary CTA are both amber.
4. At 320px the two-column card grid does not collapse; the CTA goes off-screen.
5. Cut the "Recently viewed" rail. It serves a different task.
```

---

Canonical HTML: https://www.promptabide.com/bides/design-critique-not-praise-lucas-oliveira-4
Agent guide: https://www.promptabide.com/llms.txt · https://www.promptabide.com/agent-instructions.md
Sitemap: https://www.promptabide.com/sitemap.xml