I experienced my first group painting critique tonight. 20+ paintings and a dozen people critiquing them one by one; a wonderful learning experience. The best teaching elements of code inspections early in a project, but without waste (such as adherence to coding standards). The whole process was about learning. Not, did you have a space after a paren or not. You learned about composition, brush strokes, lighting, mood, depth, shapes and much more. Plus you got to learn the approach of others to a design as well as an implementation. And with a master teacher, you also learned that what the majority thought was better is not necessarily so.  As they say at RISD, “crit happens.”