critique as a skill

spent a good part of yesterday auditing freshman art classes. holy cow that was fun and hilarious, the students were rowdy and emotive and i really enjoyed their work. they had made prints placed on a grid in different media, and were critiquing their work. i had listened to a lecture on contemporary art by standford professor pamela lee this week, thanks to the new stanford podcasts site. that helped me arrive with at least some familiarity with terminology and what distinctions could be important. but what struck me the most was how well they critiqued and received critique.

in my work experience, criticism and feedback was generally more tense and more argumentative. it had more of an absolute sense of what the right thing to do or what was the best approach. introducing the language and structure of these art critiques to software engineering and design would really help i’m guessing, especially the emotional practice giving constructive critique and receiving it. i’ve been in code reviews, some which worked well, but removing the sense of right and wrong and using language of owning opinions and allowing space for disagreement was frequently missed. or perhaps the engineers were just not practiced in that language, or shy and confrontation averse. practice in how to critique and receive it sounds like a really helpful life habit.

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