I had the great opportunity to supervise the Illinois Web Design contest in Springfield on April 23 – 24, 2015. As always, our contest focuses on
- professionalism (we are WebProfessionals.org after all),
- current web design job skills,
- and industry best practices to help students be better prepared to enter the workforce as web designers and developers.
Students also gain recognition for their efforts and personal satisfaction knowing they have done their best.
This represented the 15th (and last) year that I have run this competition. I am also involved with the national web design contest (held in Louisville, KY this June) and the international web design contest (held in São Paulo this August). Frankly, I lack the bandwidth to be heavily involved in all three levels. Therefore, Jon Worent will be taking over the Illinois web design contest in 2016.
We held a short contest debriefing after the competition. I wanted to summarize our observations. I hope those reviewing this find these comments helpful (particularly advisers and teachers and those planning for the 2016 competition). I plan to follow this up with an overview of thoughts on the code itself in a future post.
First of all, I was impressed with the level of professionalism and everyone’s attitude and focus. You took time to be away form home and school (and family and likely work) to participate in this event. You asked questions and sought to learn. Some arrived early, some brought resources to share with all other teams. You demonstrated precisely those traits which employers seek. In the bigger scheme, it really doesn’t matter where you placed, it matters that you chose to compete. You showed you are a self-starter. You showed a willingness to take risks. You showed that you wanted to learn and network with like minded individuals. You demonstrated you are an aspiring web professional. Frankly, I would put this event on my resume even if I placed 10th in the state. This is proof you are willing to step out of your comfort zone and grow.
During the debriefing, we reviewed a number of points. I will touch on the more salient ones as these apply to future competitions.
From a user experience design perspective, it is important to focus on the visitors to the site. Yes, the client is important, and you need to know the message and target audience form the client. However, you need to think in terms of the site visitors, how they might find the site and how they might use the site effectively and efficiently. It is important to ask questions through each step of the process.
It is important to know the tools you must use. For those relying on Integrated Development Environments or significantly older versions of tools, I encourage you to consider more modern open source tools (Brackets would be one example for an editor). Also, it is important to think in terms of accessibility (the majority of visitors to most web sites are blind – they are called search engine bots), search engine optimization, and semantic markup. There are a lot of semantic features in HTML5 – use them. Understand how to design a proper information architecture, develop low fidelity wireframes and manage your time effectively.
Know which browsers use which rendering engines (and always test in multiple browsers – including mobile). Use responsive design techniques. Where possible, think in terms of mobile first (or at least consider mobile extensively in your design). Use ideation techniques to make certain you are designing the best possible solution for your client.
Everyone participating in the competition had to go through the interview process. Embrace this part of the competition. Show you are passionate about web technologies. You likely know which types of questions you will be asked – tell me why I should hire you? In less than 1 minute, explain what you do better than anyone else. And so forth. Have answers to these sorts of questions. Also, always have meaningful questions and observations to share when you are asked if you have any questions. You were meeting with leaders in various aspects of web technologies and had an opportunity to learn based on the questions you asked.
There are a number of resources you may wish to investigate. While this is not a comprehensive list, it is a start.
- Web Platform
- Mozilla Developer Network
- Can I Use
- Web Design Contest (more information about our web design contests)
- School of Web
We also heard your thoughts and appreciated the feedback we received during the contest debriefing. Here are some of the items I wrote down.
- It was great working with an “actual” client and having actual text and graphics to use in the creation of the pages.
- Everyone felt challenged (it was a lot to accomplish in a short time frame).
- It was great not to rely on frameworks as this was an opportunity to showcase what everyone actually knew.
- While there were opportunities to be creative, there should be more of this.
- It was time consuming to complete the work order in the allocated time.
I may have missed comments, That is why there is room for comments below. I look forward to your comments. Note that I do have to manually approve them as I get a fair amount of spam in this venue.
Again, those who participated should be proud that they stepped up and took a risk. For those reading this who did not participate, I provide a short video overview of the competition. Participate next April.
Illinois Web Design Contest from Mark DuBois on Vimeo.
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