Building HEROES, a framework for structured design reviews
The problem
Over the years, I've facilitated countless design reviews, and the same pattern kept showing up. Feedback defaulted to visual opinions, no matter what the presenter needed or where the screen sat in its lifecycle.
We included content designers and user researchers in those reviews, but it wasn't easy for them to contribute. Sitting through rounds of visual critique from product designers was intimidating, and made their feedback feel less legitimate by comparison.
I raised these observations with my team, then with other designers I worked with. Everyone shared the same fatigue. That's what got me asking:
Could a review be structured so that its format does some of the work a facilitator or experienced designer usually does by instinct?
The framework
I started thinking about what it would take for every participant in a review to give feedback that was specific and useful. What if everyone had access to the same set of principles? Something that could shape how participants framed their feedback, and help presenters be more specific about what kind of feedback they were even asking for.
Rather than reinvent the wheel, I started from frameworks that already imposed structure on design problems: John Maeda's Laws of Simplicity and BlaBlaCar's simplification reviews. From there, I landed on six lenses:
Hide
What can be hidden, collapsed, or deferred to reduce cognitive load? What might not be needed at this moment of the user experience?
Eliminate
What can be removed entirely without losing functionality or meaning? What would nobody miss if it disappeared?
Reduce
What takes more space and attention than it deserves? Which information, control, or pattern feels redundant?
Organize
Where does the layout create confusion — competing focal points, broken scanning paths, or groupings that don't belong together?
Enchant
Does the design create delight, trust, or a moment of craft that earns loyalty? Where is an opportunity for delight?
Standardize
What deviates from established patterns or the design system without a strong reason? What feels like a reinvention of the wheel?
In practice
What made it work was simple: I opened every review with the same slide, walking through the six lenses and what each one meant. I also shared a reference doc so people knew what to expect going in.
The scope stayed narrow on purpose. HEROES looks at UI and product decisions, things like usability, clarity, and convention. It's not built for art direction, brand, or illustration. Keeping that boundary clear is what kept reviews structured instead of drifting into taste.
The outcome
Over about a year, HEROES went from one team's experiment to a framework that more than 10 design teams at Expedia use.
Designers also told me the feedback itself felt less personal, since critique was anchored to a lens rather than a judgment of their taste. A few mentioned using the lenses solo, to review their own flows before ever bringing them to a group.
What next?
I'm taking HEROES outside Expedia as an open-source Claude skill. The same six lenses, packaged for solo designers, PMs, developers, and founders who don't have a design team to bounce ideas off, and for anyone who wants a solid starting point before a live review.
Share a screenshot, a Figma link, or a live URL, and it returns structured feedback across all six lenses to make you think more about the experience you are creating.