Website Design & Functionality Awards

[likzuz]

Originally Posted by Chris is me

A few things.
1. Websites are not evaluated based on the amount of content. Too much content laid out in a confusing manner is a common criticism. What's more desired is content that's organized and laid out properly, with accessible navigation between pages.

2. If my pre-made website lets me focus more on content that is concise, easy to find, and plentiful, while my site is easier to navigate than a custom solution, why should you get the trophy for having, for all intents and purposes, a worse website?

3. When you visit Wikipedia, Chief Delphi, the White House, PostSecret, the Huffington Post, The Drudge Report, or FiveThirtyEight, along with nearly every blog on the internet, is your experience on these websites made at all worse by the fact that the engines powering them were not written from the ground up for that website?

Sorry about the long post, this is a bit of a touchy subject for me.

While what you say is correct I have one thing to say about the process.

When it comes to the website award a lot of the scores are subjective. Where it says rate them 1-4 it's completely up to the person to set standards. So you can have two different people rating two different websites. If the guy on the left thinks this website is worthy of an 80 while the other one is worth a 90 it doesn't matter because he only rates one website. While the other guy might say his website, the one the other guy said was a 90, is an 80 and the other is a 70.

The problem comes that the judges don't get to rate all the websites. They are given a batch to grade and that is that. They aren't given standards or other websites to compare it to. I've seen teams that whole heartedly deserved to win with a beautiful website, great flow of pages, amazing content management systems, and enough content to knock your boots off lose because only one-two judges looked at it and graded things harder.

There needs to be a rehaul of the system in which standards are set and all judges are judging on a level playing field while being well informed.

It's not fair to the teams that spend months building a website to be judged by a person without website experience not being able to recognize how difficult things are. While some things that look difficult but are deceptively easy will not fly with a well informed person.

But that's just my two cents.

[Chris is me]

I agree with your concerns (likzuz), but I also thought all of a regional's websites were judged by the same people. I think that would solve most of those concerns if this wasn't the case.

I also disagree with redesigning your site every year. I notice a lot of the comments on Shaker's website were of the variety "you used iWeb so your site is terrible", and it seemed either judges LOVED the website or abhorred it. Still enough to get a shiny trophy though.

[Kims Robot]

I thought this was a really interesting concept based on the feedback our team got this year...

Originally Posted by Chris is me

How is a website worthy of an award if it has one but not the other? Websites need to be accessible and easy to read but at the same time without information they are worthless. I don't see how you could justify rewarding a team that neglects either of these.

1511 has spent the past 6 years building up the site we have. We have many many pages of content & documentation, a forum, a wiki, a blog and SVN all built into our site. We were going for function and usefulness to our team, our sponsors and other teams. Several of our pages are linked on the FIRST website. It ranks the highest of any FIRST teams I know in the "how much is your site worth". We added a few "pretty" details... fancy buttons, the front page slideshow, etc. But for the most part, we kept the style and layout that our freshman student put together after our first year. The site is built for function.

Our feedback basically knocked us down for not "redesigning" our site every year. So stating it simply, that's how you could win function and not form.

Though, I'm not sure we need a longer awards ceremony, and there are certainly a lot of sites that have form & function out there, so I guess it gives us something to shoot for. (Though I still dont think I agree with having redesign your site every year)

Neat idea, but I guess I see it from both sides.