Building Design Crit — the story so far

I'm building Design Crit for the Config Makeathon: a feedback space for designers who work without a team — freelancers, juniors, solo designers. A place to show unfinished work and get real feedback, without the likes, the followers, or the fear of showing something raw.

The journey so far, fully in public:

Day 0 — the why. Designers inside companies have design crits: a ritual for showing work-in-progress. Freelancers and solo designers have nothing — they work in a vacuum, and that vacuum is exactly what makes the finish line so terrifying. I wanted to build the thing I always needed.

Day 1 — first contact with Figma's design agent. New tool for me, very much in the Figma Make family. The lesson: tell it what kind of thing you're making before how it should look — I asked for "editorial" and got three landing pages instead of a product screen.

Day 2 — the feed. I designed the heart of Design Crit: an anti-social feed. No likes, no followers, no counts — just drafts that need eyes, and a 72-hour timer before each post disappears. The absence of metrics isn't a missing feature. It is the product.

Day 3 — a field report on the agent. A full day testing where Figma's design agent shines and where it drifts. It's brilliant at small, anchored tasks — component variants, type styles from a font — but on bigger leaps it reinvents instead of inheriting. It even gave my mobile screen a whole new theme and font, despite having my desktop design as reference. The real skill isn't writing the perfect prompt — it's knowing which kind of task you're handing it.

Next: the screen where it all pays off — when the feedback comes in, the consensus forms, and the doubt finally lifts.

I'm documenting everything, with detailed breakdowns and screenshots, in a public doc → https://s.craft.me/V3oiZtNlZ41AYJ

#buildinPublic #ConfigMakeathon