This year I served as Lead Judge for Team 10 in the International Summit Awards (ISA) competition. I learned a few important lessons that I want to share with you.
- Provide a thorough assessment.
- Provide constructive comments and suggestions for improvement.
- Be kind and courteous in your evaluation because you never know when you will meet the people who submitted the entry to you.
Our busy schedules do not always give us the time to concentrate on reviewing the entries, but doing so is very important to the people who rely on the feedback to improve quality. Keep this in mind as I tell you this story.
I attended this year’s Summit and, while browsing the table of the winning entries, I met Ann Rafferty and Lilly Anaya—the Best of Show winners. They wanted to thank me for providing the kind of feedback that helped them improve the usability of their website. I apologized, but I was not the team that reviewed their entry. They were disappointed because they really wanted to meet the judges and personally thank them. Ann and Lilly told me that it was the judges’ feedback that led them to correct issues that affected usability and consistency of presentation. This year, they resubmitted the website to the ISA and won Best of Show. By winning Best of Show, Ann and Lilly earned the credibility they needed to ask stakeholders, management, and customers to follow standards and best practices for Web design. As you know, it is never enough to evangelize usability—you need credibility!
To all of you who volunteered to judge this year’s competition—thank you. To the judges that provided the feedback for Ann and Lilly to improve their website—well done!
I’m David Dick and I’m talking usability.