Michele, you mentioned that maybe it is time for the industry to set up it's own awards. Although it has been done, and "failed" before I think it is important to outline WHY they failed and what the industry can do now to make it succeed.
While we can clearly see what to GoldenSpiders are doing wrong, what are they doing right? Where would an industry led awards start?
The concept of the Golden Spiders is fine. Their stated aim is "to reward excellence in design, functionality, creativity and innovation in
Ireland's internet industry." That says it all.
Where the current system falls flat is that they are failing to judge on their own criteria. We already have seen that thay have excluded basic W3C standards [which surely falls under design or funcionality]. As I have said before, this is like the Booker Prize Committee failing to check for spelling and grammar.
They are also pandering to vested interests. Nepotism is rife. We see the same old sites coming up time after time [RTE, Magico to name but two] who clap themselves on the back and say how great they are. It is essentially a closed shop. And when judges on the panel actually have their own sites nominated.. Draw your own conclusions.
They have also turned it into a money making racket. Once money gets involved, then standards of judging become suspect.
What the industry need is an award system based precisely on the Golden Spiders criteria - to reward excellence in design, functionality, creativity and innovation in Ireland's internet industry.
However [and here is the difference], it should be free to enter. Sites should be judged, not by vested interests, but by experts outside the direct area. There are enough people out there - journalists, lecturers etc who are not directly involved with the industry yet who know enough about it to give an unbiassed qualitative judgement. Or the sites could be judged by popular vote. This would be harder to police, but the public know better than any judge as to what they want and like.
The industry itself is not necessarily the best judge of a website. I have seen sites that were amazing from the design perspective, and designers have raved about them. But the general public would find them confusing, non-intuitve and hard to navigate. We must never forget that designs are not for designers - they are for the public.
I will confess to a vested interest in all this. I wrote a site. The design is OK but I have seen better. However, the company involved has received numerous compliments from other companies, and from the public on the design. The company is delighted with the site. The site is highly innovative in that it has functions that are extremely complex and took a lot of sweat and tears. The site has seen sales increase tenfold since I took it over. It is a successful site and I have had a good relationship with that company. I might add that I could have entered it for the Spiders, but frankly I knew a) the lack of value in the awards and b) I wasn't "in" well enough. I might also add that the site validates
Now what p*sses me is that this company has been blinded by the Spiders. They are switching for the sole reason that the design house won the Spider last year and has been bragging about it. I didn't like to tell my client that they were making a HUGE mistake, because it would have sounded like sour grapes. Time will tell.....
