Pronouncing the verdict: Jury for designers

Work with design students of most any discipline, and you’ll come across this phrase “my jury is…” or “I’m preparing for my jury…”. Seems overly dramatic and serious for design. Is there a verdict involved? Sentencing? Jailtime??

Ok so, no. No jailtime or sentencing. But certainly a verdict is involved, and might include some soul-searching too.?

What is a jury anyway? Jury is typically comprised of both internal and external judges, who show up to check out and critique a designer’s work, in front of any/all who want to listen in, somewhat reminiscent of a conventional court. The student puts up their work and presents it solo to the jury. Everything about it is evaluated – the product, process, presentation, attitude, and more. It is a constant source of anxiety and mindshare in design schools – see the many articles addressing architectural and other design students on how to prepare and survive juries online.

Why is it done like that? Many reasons -

• An open jury enables meta-learning. Apart from getting feedback on the outcomes, there’s discussion on process, why something works/doesn’t, and often a discussion on the designer themselves – who they are, their background, experiences, language, culture, and more, and its influence on their work. This can be uncomfortable for the uninitiated, but in a well-working program, it is a safe space for an essential exploration of the designers’ psyche and factors that have moulded it thus far. Criticism in a Jury is an opportunity for reflection and reconsideration, something that is rarely provided in the real world. That is the reason why those working in design-related roles often find the area of “unconscious incompetence” (See four stages of competence) really hard to reduce –in real world, the client or anyone else for that matter is not obligated to illuminate you on your blind-spots. One indeed is lucky to receive constructive critique in life.
• The second special gift of a jury is – the process helps creators learn to separate critique of their work from a sense of critique on self. This can be hardest reflex to tame – we naturally own and believe in our creation which is why we’ve put it out there to our client. It represents our deep thought and conviction. For this reason it naturally feels it represents us, our intellect, our competence. For a client to reject it or critique it or find it wanting can seem like a personal shortcoming or attack on self. The Jury process trains us to have some humility – we know that we work for fellow humans who cannot be completely understood, the work itself is never perfect, and that is ok. It would be soul-crushing and depression-inducing if that weren’t so!
• All this happens in front of an audience – mostly of peers in your class. Presenting your ideas and arguments in public can vary in feel from flogging to bull-fighting to virtuoso performance and more. But in all cases, repeated exposure to it makes you ok with putting stuff out there, with being vulnerable in public, and finding oneself ever more fearless!
• And finally, the jury process is built on the idea of iteration – it is OK to not land right in an ‘nth’ attempt, it is ok to go back and do the next version based on the cumulation of all context and feedback. Not ‘landing’ it isn’t a sign of incompetence, its just a step in the right direction.

You can see though, it is inherently an expensive and brain-intensive activity that relies on finding good jurors who can evaluate fairly, encourage freely, and deliver tough critique kindly.

I have hired and worked with designers with formal training, and without. The one thing that is often different between the two groups particularly in the beginning is how they receive feedback. Feedback to trained designers turns into a discussion quickly, whereas with the other group it can feel argumentative or defensive where the designer seems to entrench into their position the more we question. I can only put this down to lack of opportunity towards diverse evaluation methods including Jury. We use regular reviews and jury methods in our studio as a process, and while we don’t have the same time/space as Jury in school, with repeated exposure the feedback process improves the dialog and the work in the studio. Jury activities might seem overly ‘gyan’ and impractical for commercial enterprise, but they are in fact very powerful tools for quality assurance and mentorship in a studio.

If you’ve read till here, would love to hear about your favorite jury experience if you’ve had the opportunity, and also how do you practice it in your studio?