The current set of digital tools being used to facilitate online design critiques fails to meet a number of important design instructor and student needs. Both instructors and students face challenges from the traditional design critique, such as limitations on class time and student reluctance to participate.
Successful design critiques involve a high level of interaction, both instructor-to-student and student-to-student. However, many of the tools now being used to carry out online critiques provide only a limited amount of interaction. A digital tool is needed that can not only address issues of limited time and communicating across distance, but can give students a meaningful and interactive resource of comments to draw on to improve their own work, while providing instructors with new ways of checking on and encouraging student participation.
A digital tool for design critiques is proposed that can address these issues and provide new benefits to instructors and students that are not found in existing tools. It is hoped that the development of this tool can help to expand the quality and quantity of meaningful instruction between design students and instructors.