NED12 How to critique

After the process of experimentation it is a good idea to critique, or evaluate your work - it forces you to view your work objectively and assess how well it meets the project objectives.

Robin Landa provides the following checklist to refer to when evaluating your design solutions:

Part I: The Project

1. Restate the goal or aim of the project – in your OWN words. Do this to make sure you understand the problem you are setting out to solve.
2. Did you fulfill the goal you were supposed to achieve? Did you miss the point of the original problem you were trying to solve?
3. Is your solution appropriate for the audience or purpose of the project you are working on? For example, are your colors childish or corporate?
4. Is your solution appropriately executed?
5. Are you using a suitable visual hierarchy of information? Will your audience know where to look first, second, and third?
6. Does your solution communicate the intended message to your audience appropriately? You can ask people to tell you what message they are interpreting from your design.

Part II: The Process

1. Did you do any research? If so, how did you use it? Should you have done more?
2. How many thumbnail sketches and roughs did you do before you created your comp? How much time did you really think about the problem?
3. Did you experiment outside of your comfort zone? Or did you stick to your area of strength?
4. Did you make any false assumptions about what you could or couldn't do? Or did you take a positive approach that you could do anything if you really tried? It is very important to experiment and build your confidence in designing. Try flipping, stretching, skewing, speckling, etc
5. Did you really allow yourself to become involved in this problem you were solving? Did you use your imagination and feelings? Were your feelings personal or removed?
6. Were you too judgmental? Did you give yourself a chance to be creative? Were you patient with the project and yourself? Don't be so hard on yourself that it makes you afraid to take chances.
7. Did you take chances? Were your solutions innovative? Did you dare to be different? Or did you do what most people would do? One way of determining this is to compare your solution to others? How many other people reached the same conclusions?

For critique exercise, some inspiring designs:
www.patagonia.com (DI) - a simple, clean looking interface with lovely huge wildlife or landscape photographs, lots of white space giving an impression of space, simplicity. Browsing the navigation bar there is quite a lot of information available on the site, but it is cleverly designed so as not to confuse or overpower the visitor.

spanish-portuguese.berkeley.edu (DI) - another clean, clear look. I love the typography on this one. There is a LOT of text, but it has been presented in a decorative way so as not to be overpowering or boring.

www.crocs.com (DI) - This is a very bright and funky interface, which I think says a lot about the product - it is fun, colourful fashion. At the same time it is clean and simple, easy to navigate - allowing focus on the product.

And some poor designs (featured on webpagesthatsuck.com):
www.westservicecenter.com
www.redbloodclub.net
meteo.previsionsfrance.org

Basic principles of design from Digital Web, a Flash site to check out www.thefwa.com (courtesy Jo J.)