Your Site Sucks

January 08, 2004 | View Comments (6) | Category: Our Thoughts

Summary: On criticism and websites.

Keith has an interesting entry discussing opinions in web design. All to quickly when someone posts a website there will either be people who love it, people who could care less, and people who hate it. The ones who love it throw their praise out for it. Those who could care less simply say nothing. Those who hate it, either say nothing or simply tell the person that "their site sucks." No wonder some people are hesitant about feedback.

The web is a public place and the first couple of designs you put up it will take some courage or stupidity to ask for someone's opinion. The reason I say stupidity is because some people will always view their sites as the greatest things around and will ask for someone's opinion only because they wish to hear how wonderful they are. That is just stupid. It's stupid because you are only setting yourself up for some major disappointment when someone tells you, "Couldn't you do something more to it, like this site?"

Instead, when you ask for someone's opinion you should anticipate hearing some criticism. Don't take this to heart, but let it help you make your design better. Maybe you will agree with them, maybe you won't, but it doesn't mean you have to do everything they suggest. Nothing wrong with a different perspective on things.

If you are the person giving the criticism then by all means try to make it as helpful as possible. Telling someone "it's not bad" is not helpful at all. Tell them what you don't like about it and offer some suggestions on how you would do it. This method helps both people out.

When I openly criticized the GAWDS I did so because I wanted to help them. However, I could not offer too much design criticism because in my opinion the whole site simply needed to be reworked. The best thing I probably could have done was offer my own design for them, but these guys have already done so, and it is already better than the old site.

There are some designers who wish to never hear a thing about their designs because that is just the way they are. I ask for critiques because I like to see different perspectives. If you are going to offer criticism though, just help everyone out by making it useful. And everyone just learn to watch your ego.

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Comments

#1

Great points Scrivs. I am always looking for comments, both good and bad, about my designs. As I stated over at "*", Compliments let you know what you are doing right, criticism lets you know what you are doing wrong. Some people don't see it that way. They see criticism as someone else raining on their parade.

Opening yourself up to criticism a good way to become a great designer. Nobody has the perfect design. Everyone has different tastes and opinions about what they think is good design.

Jeremy Flint (http://www.jeremyflint.com)

#2

Why is criticism, critique and critics negative words? Feedback is one of the most important things to consider when writing a site. If a lot of people are complaining, listen to them! If a lot of people are encouraging you, so much the better!

Some very good points, Scrivs.

David House

#3

I agree Scrivs. I think an interesting experiment would be to open up a new thread of discussion devoted to criticizing Whitespace and/or the CSSVault. We could see what manner of criticism people can offer that is the most useful against the "d00d, u 5uxx0r$$!!1!" kind.

People could post their criticism and you could answer with your thoughts on the matter (as you mention, sometimes something people don't like has a deeply rooted, very valid reason). I think if anyone can pull something like this off it's you.

sergio (http://overcaffeinated.net)

#4

I personally love criticism, as long as it is constructive. Constructive being the keyword. If you don't like it, say why, and give me a suggestion on how to make it better. Then, if I agree, I'll fix it. If not, I'll explain why. An open mind to constructive criticism is the best way to go. If it's not constructive, it's best to ignore it, because there's nothing you can do, and chances are it's just a personal taste issue (for example, someone who doesn't like red at all, whatsoever.)

Matt Burris (http://www.goodblimey.com/)

#5

Your site IS extremely good!
In the way of criticism, personally I wish some cool small image somewhere :)
I think You even cant realize how helpful Your blog to people like me
Thank You and please sorry for my poor English

Andrey Stefanenko

#6

Nick Finck showed us a great article on how to give criticsm for a site over at Digital-Web here:

http://www.digital-web.com/tutorials/tutorial_2000-11.shtml

Scrivs (http://www.9rules.com/whitespace/)

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