I was honored to be invited to speak at WordCamp Denver for CritiquePress. I’ve shared the stage with the amazing Meg Delagrange, a local designer extraordinaire. We’ve given valuable real-time feedback for designs that have been submitted in advance in a hybrid town-hall / panel discussion format.
I understand that getting your website or the design you’ve created critiqued can make you feel vulnerable. Especially in front of an audience. I however believe it’s important to share your work and get feedback. There is always something that can be improved. Sometimes the smallest change can have the biggest impact.
As designers we sometimes tend to be perfectionists. But perfect is the enemy of done. Websites are a living thing, it’s better to iterate as content grows. Over time we learn more about our audience and how they interact with the website. It’s always recommend to ship early and continue to iterate.
Meg and I critique each website based on the following categories: User Flow, Storytelling, Layout, and Accessibility.
We’ve gathered some resources on the topic we’d like to share with you:
Design & User Experience
- Design Principles: Introduction To Hierarchy
- Web UI Design Best Practices (free eBook)
- Design for Real Life (ebook)
- Responsive Design: Patterns & Principles (ebook)
- Why aren’t you asking Questions?
- Just Enough Research (ebook)
- The Design of Everyday Things (book – a UX classic!)
Accessibility
- WordPress Theme Handbook – Accessibility
- Useful WordPress Accessibility Tools
- 7 Things Every Designer Needs to Know about Accessibility – Smashing Mag
- Wave – Web Accessibility Testing Tool
- Color contrast checker
- WordPress community for resources: wa11y.org
- Plugin to improve accessibility
- Colorsafe – Accessible color palettes
- Inclusive Design Patterns (ebook)
Slides of presentation can be found on Speakerdeck.