Atarim for Design Leads: Streamlining Design Collaboration

Design review breaks in predictable places. Feedback arrives in four channels and none of them is the design. Version three gets comments meant for version two. A client says “approved” in a meeting and nobody can produce it later. Your designers ask you what the client meant, and you were not on the call. Atarim attacks all four by putting the review on the artefact itself — versioned, attributed, and tracked to completion.

Feedback sits on the design, attached to the version it was given on.

This guide is about running that process as the person accountable for it, not just participating in it.

Getting Designs Into Atarim

A design project holds the mockups, and there are three ways to fill it.

Instructions:

1. Open the project that should hold the designs. To start a new design project, select Add new on the Projects screen and choose Upload designs or PDFs or Connect to Figma.
2. In the sidebar, open Designs and select Add design. The upload window opens, headed Upload Design.
3. Drag files in, or select Upload Files to browse. You can upload up to 20 designs at a time.
4. Alternatively, paste a Figma link into the field labelled Drop a Figma URL Here. Select a frame in Figma before copying the URL to import that design; with no frame selected, the full page is pulled in.

Uploading several related designs at once groups them into a collection, which is the right move for a set of page mockups or a brand guide rather than adding them one at a time.

Where the designs live matters as much as getting them in. Explore How To Set Up And Customize Projects

Working From Figma

The Atarim Figma plugin pushes designs out of Figma without leaving it. From inside Figma you connect to your account, choose the workspace and project, and then either add a new project, add a design to an existing one, or add a new version of a design already there.

Confirmations are explicit — Project created, Design added, or New version uploaded — and you can copy a link straight back to the design in Atarim to share with reviewers.

Managing Versions

Versions are what stop round three from inheriting round two’s comments. Each design carries its own version history, and feedback stays attached to the version it was left on.

Instructions:

1. Open the design and find the info bar above it.
2. Select Create new version and upload the revised file. The window is headed Add Version.
3. Use the version selector to move between versions and compare what changed.
4. To remove one, select the delete option and confirm. You are warned that it cannot be undone.

Two constraints are worth knowing before you plan a workflow around this. The last remaining version cannot be deleted — the control reports it directly. And version actions are permission-gated: someone without rights sees You do not have permission to create new versions rather than a silent failure.

What the Design Info Bar Controls

Designs can also be reordered by dragging them in the grid, which is faster than moving one position at a time when you are sequencing a deck for a client walkthrough.

Setting a Design’s Status

Status is how a design announces where it is in the cycle without anyone having to ask. The control sits in the bottom bar, labelled Design Status, with the tooltip “change status for the current design in view”.

Instructions:

1. Open the design you want to move.
2. Select Design Status in the bottom bar.
3. Choose the status. It applies to the design currently in view and shows as a badge in the designs sidebar.

Getting Designs in Front of Reviewers

Uploading a design does not show it to anyone. Reviewers reach it through the Share control in the bottom bar, whose tooltip states the purpose plainly — invite others to collaborate and provide feedback.

Instructions:

1. Open the design you want reviewed.
2. Select Share in the bottom bar. The sharing options cover both team members and clients or guests.
3. Add the people who should review, or copy the link to send yourself.
4. Set the design to Needs Review so it is obvious what you are asking for.

Collecting Feedback on the Design

Reviewers click the part of the design they mean and type. Each comment becomes a task, pinned to that point, on that version. When a design has no feedback yet, the sidebar prompts reviewers directly: click any part of the design to leave your feedback.

As the lead, three things matter more than the mechanics:

• Reviewers see each other’s comments. Contradictory feedback surfaces during the round rather than after it, which is when it is cheap to resolve.
• Every task carries who, when, and which version. You never have to reconstruct a decision from memory.
• Feedback is a task, not a message. It has a status, an assignee, and a priority, so it can be tracked to done.

Routing Feedback to the Right Designer

Collected feedback still has to reach someone. Each task can be assigned, and the interface tells you plainly who is on the hook — a task shows that a named person will be notified, and the tooltip describes the list as people who will get updates on this task.

Tasks also carry a priority, which is how you sequence a round of thirty comments into something a designer can work through in order rather than top to bottom.

Keeping Internal Notes Internal

Not every comment should reach the client. Tasks and comments can be marked internal, and the tooltip states the effect exactly: hide this task from guests and clients.

This is what lets you run a design critique and a client review on the same artefact. Your team debates approach, estimates, and what to push back on, in place, on the design — and the client sees only what concerns them.

Finding What Needs Your Attention

By round three, the task list is long. The design sidebar carries filters and sorting built for exactly this.

Using the InnerCircle on a Built Page

Once a design has been built, the InnerCircle can review the live page before your reviewers do. It is Atarim’s AI review team, described in the product as being there to elevate the quality of your work with actionable feedback, and each member reviews from one perspective.

You choose who takes part. At least one agent has to be switched on, and the review will tell you so if none is. Findings come back in the Review tab in the sidebar, grouped by the section of the page they were found in. Select any finding to jump to it on the page.

Instructions:

1. Open the page you want reviewed in the collaboration view and open the Review tab in the sidebar. Pick a preset (it replaces anything typed in the description), add a sentence of your own, choose the agents, then select Review This Page. At least one agent must be enabled.
2. Let the review run. A review already in progress blocks a second one until it finishes.
3. Work through what came back in the Review tab. Findings are listed as subtasks under the review, and selecting one takes you to it on the page.

Giving the AI Your Brand Context

An AI review is only as specific as the context behind it. Brand assets live in the Brand Assets tab of Settings › Agency Brief for the workspace, and of Project Brief › Brief for a single project. They cover your logo and favicon, Primary Colors and Accent Colors, and typography, with fonts searchable from Google Fonts.

Assets can inherit from your workspace globals, and the interface says so where they do — global settings are currently enabled, with a note that customising them for a single project means switching global settings off first.

Benefits for a Design Lead

Example Use Cases

Known Limitations

• The last version of a design cannot be deleted. Delete the design itself if you need it gone entirely.
• You can upload up to 20 designs at a time.
• Several features depend on your plan — internal tasks, image annotations, attachments, notes, canned responses, and page approvals all report a lock where they are unavailable.
• Version and design actions are permission-gated, so team members without rights cannot create or delete versions.
• Figma import depends on frame selection. With no frame selected, the full page is imported instead.
• A design with No Status displays as In Progress in the sidebar, so it cannot be told apart from work that has genuinely started.
• Draft cannot be set from the status control, even though it can be displayed.
• Design status and task status are separate. Marking every task complete does not move the design to Approved.
• The designs view expects a reasonable screen width and warns when the browser is narrower than recommended.

FAQs

Common issues

• “You do not have permission to create new versions” — your role on this project does not carry version rights. Ask an administrator.
• The delete option on a version is unavailable — it is the last remaining version. Delete the design instead.
• A Figma import brought in the whole page — no frame was selected when the URL was copied. Select the frame and import again.
• Upload failed — check that you are uploading 20 designs or fewer at a time, and that the file type is supported.
• Internal tasks are locked — the feature is not on your current plan. Do not assume a task is hidden from clients until this is enabled.
• The AI review will not start — at least one agent must be switched on, and reviews cannot be started from the Designs view.
• AI feedback is generic — brand assets and the project brief are empty or inherited. Fill them in for this project.
• A design you have not touched shows as In Progress — it has no status set. The badge falls back to In Progress.
• You cannot see the Design Status control — page approvals are not on your plan, or your role does not carry the status permissions.
• Reviewers say they cannot open the design — it has not been shared. Use Share in the bottom bar.
• Feedback landed on the wrong version — the reviewer was viewing an older version. Check the version selector before the next round opens.

Conclusion

The process that works is unglamorous and repeatable: import from Figma, critique in internal tasks, set the design to Needs Review, assign and prioritise as feedback arrives, add a version rather than overwriting, and set Approved deliberately when it is genuinely done. Do that consistently and the arguments about what was agreed simply stop happening.

Everything above depends on the right people being in the project in the first place. Explore Managing Team Members & Collaborators