I thought I would take some time to make a few comments about critiques of other people’s work. For anyone who is not aware, I created this site in a one-semester class called e-portfolio. It’s the first real website I’ve ever created in my life using strictly html and css, both of which validate on the w3c standards site. It has a working blog powered by wordpress with tags, categories, and archives. The portfolio page employs a light javascript called “slimbox” to bring up the pictures and each have a description. I have a working contact form and the about me section comes from the heart and isn’t meant to sound like I’m on some high-horse of mine.
I’d also like to point out a flaw. Yes, the navigation does change from the homepage to the rest of them. Neither my professor nor my classmates had anything to say about this during the initial design stages of our sites, and having never designed a website before, I overlooked this issue. I’ve never taken a user-experience class, and I’ve never interned at a web-design company. If I could go back in time I would probably have made a different choice for the homepage. Considering it’s the first website I’ve ever made, I find this to be a truly minute jab at what I’ve managed to create. If you look at the rest of the portfolios the class made, mine stands out as one of top ones.
The reason I mention this is because I just read one of my classmates high-and-mighty posts about User Experience. In his post, he writes at one point: “Changing where your navigation is located in my opinion is a huge no no. Having your homepage list the nav, say, on the right, left, or bottom, then when you eventually find the nav and then clicking what you want, then having the nav relocate to the top or somewhere else (I’m thinking mainly of changing to the top) is ridiculous.” It goes on. I can agree that it’s distracting to have the navigation change and as I said before it’s just something I happened to overlook, but will be attempting to fix in the next few weeks.
What he doesn’t mention in his post is anything about user experience of blogs, perhaps because his is lacking in that department. My friend made a comment about how he could improve his own user experience, but I noticed that he deleted it a few minutes later. When I read her comment I did not find it to be rude or bitchy, she was truly just trying to offer another designer’s honest critique. I guess only he’s allowed to make critical judgments about other people’s designs. I think any designer knows that critique is important, you can’t see all the flaws yourself because you get too used to what you’ve designed. A better designer would have said something like “hey, thanks for the info, i’ll consider those points.” An insecure designer would take offense and quickly delete the comment.
And that is hopefully the longest rant I will ever go on for this blog.
