Website Critiques, Interested?

[Ryo Chiba]

One of the most annoying things about putting together any sort of media (be it poster, animation, or website) on my team is that constructive criticism is few and far between. As I helped put together last year's website, I should have had people telling me all of the negative aspects of the site, but no one did. It's polite to nod and pretend everything looks alright, but when it comes down to it, it is this politeness that leads to mediocrity.

So, I look back our 2006 site with shame and disgrace. It's difficult to navigate, and it's simply a terribly visually unpleasing design.

To prevent this from happening to myself, and to other teams, we have a plan.

This year, our webteam will make screencast critiques of other interested FIRST teams' websites.

It's a win-win situation. We can learn from other teams' successes and failures. You can learn what we think could improve on your site.

Would any webteams reading this post be interested in having the usability, design, and general quality of their website critiqued with a generous helping of constructive criticism?

[artdutra04]

Originally Posted by Ryo Chiba

Would any webteams reading this post be interested in having the usability, design, and general quality of their website critiqued with a generous helping of constructive criticism?

If you want something to look over, you can look over our team's website at team228.org. I often find myself being my hardest critic (and hence constantly changing and improving things), so have fun.

But if anyone else would like their website critiqued, I'll gladly look over theirs as well.

[fimmel]

i may be ... closer to the season
...forest

[Uberbots]

sure, it cant hurt (=

http://uberbots.org/2008/index.php <- that is the development link, if you want to watch it.
it will move to the root once it is done (mid summer, probably)


i think this is a great idea.

[Branden Ghena]

I am willing to give it a shot. Our website is kind of basic and any criticism is welcome. Our website is: http://www.jefferson.k12.mi.us/jhs/web240/index.html
(We are hosted through our school district so the link is kind of long)

Good idea by the way. I think a little criticism from your peers can go a long way toward improvement.

[Ryo Chiba]

Thanks for the sites, folks!

Our webteam is going to have a meeting to make these in 4 days, and they'll be eventually featured on our website.

I'll send messages to interested parties when they're done.

Anyone else interested?

[Tim Arnold]

If its not too late, I'd love to hear some critique for our site, http://www.marsbot.org. Our site is a slowly evolving one, using the same codebase and CMS each year but fixing bugs and making more features constantly, so some constructive criticism could be of great help to us. Thanks!

[KathieK]

I would be glad to look at teams' websites.

[BandChick]

I'm with Kathie on this one. Having been a website judge for three years now at a few regionals, I'ld be glad to sit down and give you some CC so you have a better chance at the Website Award!

[FRANK(WGH)]

I'd love for our site to get some constructive criticism. Team 48 will even have a brand new design to role out this fall. Our web team will need helpful comments this season.

[Sgt. Mammoth]

Great Idea! We would love to get feedback on our website. It's still in ongoing development, but any constructive criticism would be extremely helpful!

Here is the link:
http://www.team1732.com

[KathieK]

Your website should be designed for your audience - so you need to decide who that is, first thing. Then determine what information you want to communicate to that audience. Then build your website around that content. Concentrate on your content and navigation scheme vs. building a flashy design. The greatest looking website with all the bells and whistles will not impress your audience if they can't find up-to-date content that they are looking for. The website team should include people who can write coherently for the web as well as the designers. Someone needs to be responsible for gathering updated content and keeping it fresh on the site. Have someone (perhaps someone from your school's English department?) proofread your site for grammatical and spelling errors. By all means, write FIRST correctly (it's an acronym) and explain its meaning somewhere on the site. And if you're going to mention the four FIRST programs, be sure to get the titles of the programs correct.

You do not have to design your site to compete for the FRC website award, but... I've judged several FRC Regional Website competitions as well as the Championships last year. It amazes me how many teams submit for that award and do not follow the simple criteria outlined in the manual (Sect. 5, p.12). Another thing often lacking is the name and location of the team on the homepage! Or an easy way for people to contact your team! And while it's nice to know that your team has won several awards over the years, be sure to include the personal stories about how being on a FIRST team has impacted you!