Me, wearing moulage

On Friday, I volunteered to be a moulage participant for an Advanced Trauma Life Support course being offered for doctors at my medical school’s affiliated hospital. Essentially, I was was made up to look like a trauma victim so that the people in the course could run through what they would need to do based on the injuries I had.

I played a 22-year-old female who was in a head-on collision car accident who was ejected through the windshield on impact. I was supposed to have sustained a tibia/fibula fracture in my left leg, several pelvic fractures, and a few broken ribs, and a great deal of abdominal bruising (with possible internal bleeding?). I was also supposed to have a tension pneumothorax, be extremely anxious and belligerent/combative, and smell of alcohol.

To be honest, I was really hoping that I would be in a coma or something so that I could just go to sleep (I was tired… you can’t blame me), but it was actually rather fun to yell at the doctors and scream that I’m going to die. It was hard to pretend that I was in severe respiratory distress, though– my respiration rate was supposed to be 50 breaths/minute (and I obviously couldn’t breathe anywhere near that fast). The fast and shallow breaths really got tiring after a while.

Apparently the make-up was very convincing, because I had a few concerned people come up to me and ask about it afterwards– it was pretty awkward getting home, since I didn’t get a chance to clean up.

“Humanism in medicine” or “humanistic medicine” has become a bit of a buzz phrase in medical education. Likewise, “professionalism” is a word that gets thrown around a lot, at least at my school, in reference to everything from lecture attendance to dress codes. As medical students, we’re expected to speak the appropriate language, to behave in the appropriate way and, above all else, to think the appropriate thoughts: the obese patient isn’t just fat and lazy, but the victim of poor education or cultural priorities. Likewise, the rude patient is more than just a simple jerk. They try very hard to make us empathetic, respectful, patient, considerate, and all manner of other wonderful things that you could hope for your doctor to be. That’s one hell of a lofty goal, and I can’t say that I’m not just the tiniest bit intimidated.

As much as I’d like to think of myself as a somewhat mature person, the truth is that I’m the kind of person that enjoys internet drama, that has trouble getting out of bed before the clock strikes noon, and that gets excited at the prospect of shoving sweets in my mouth. I’ve spent my entire life to date in the ivory tower that is academia and so, have no idea how real people actually live their lives. To think that in one more year, I’ll actually be on the wards in my white coat– it’s a bit of a terrifying thought.

Talk about having a biased outlook…

The stigma around unrequested reviews

One of the complaints about my reviewer review is that the reviewer, Georgina, did not ask for it to be done. Indeed, there seems to be quite a bit of stigma around the idea of reviewing a website that has not requested a review, and people who provide unrequested reviews are often labeled as “bitchy” or “arrogant.” Therefore, I wanted to address the topic of unrequested reviews a bit more generally.

My stance on this topic is that it’s absurd to criticize a reviewer for writing an unrequested review. It’s impossible to visit a site or read an article without forming an opinion about its quality, and publishing those opinions is almost as natural as having them in the first place. Just think about how ridiculous it would be if you had to ask a book’s author or a movie director for permission every time you wanted to post a book or movie review on your blog! We pass judgment and publish our opinions on everything from socks to video games to furniture, why not websites and website reviewers as well?

The need for reviewer reviews

Website reviewers abound all over the internet and, since these reviews are offered on an informal basis, there is no basal level of expertise required for anyone to become a reviewer. As a result, many reviewers offering mediocre reviews and less-than-great advice to their readers. Furthermore, by reviewing another site, reviewers set themselves up as voices of authority which webdesign newcomers are prone to learn from.

Web page reviewers have a potentially tremendous amount of influence and should be held to a higher standard. They should be made to look more critically upon their own work and to examine whether their reviews are actually helpful.

My intentions

With my reviewer reviews, I intend not only to alert reviewers to potential areas for improving their reviews, but to help other webmasters discern which reviewers are worth listening to. Of course, my opinions regarding what makes a good review are just my opinions, and I would welcome any feedback on my own sites or reviews. However, with over 10 years of webdesign experience under my belt, I’d like to think that I’m at least somewhat qualified.

I strive to keep my reviews professional and well-thought-out. I’ve tried as much as possible to provide useful feedback and not to dwell on personal differences in opinion. Of course, I’m only human and apologize if I can’t be 100% unbiased.

Edit: Addressing Heartdrops.org specifically (8/29/2010)

Based on some of the comments I’ve received, I just wanted to make it clear for the record that I have no problem with Georgina of Heartdrops.org at this point. This post was not meant as an attack against her in any way, and I commend her for ultimately being receptive to some of my suggestions.

Heartdrops.org's screenshot of Neogrotesque

Before I get in to critiquing the review proper, I wanted to comment on the organization and user-friendliness of the reviewer’s site itself (well, the “Reviews” section, anyway). Overall, I find the site to be well-organized and easy to navigate. However, I do have a few suggestions.

First of all, I think that the “Completed Reviews” archive should list, along with the name of the site and the date reviewed, the scores that each site received. This would give visitors some idea, at a glance, of what your standards are and which sites you consider to be good or bad. It would also help your visitors pick and choose which reviews they actually want to take the time to read.

I’d also like to bring attention to the website screenshots that are included with each site review. While I like the idea of having the screenshot, I think that these particular screenshots should be cleaned up a bit. The point of the screenshot is give visitors a sample of what the site that’s being reviewed looks like, but in these screenshots, 49px of the 157px image height are taken up the browser’s chrome and the OS taskbar. That’s almost a third of the image! These elements distract from the site design that’s being showcased, and could easily be cropped out. On the other hand, if the intention was to show how the website looks within the browser viewport, I would suggest using a more standard and less customized chrome in order to show how the site will look for most users.

Those issues aside, let’s move on to the review.

Site Name

The name is quite unique; no problems here.

It seems to be a popular trend lately for reviews to include a section dealing with the site name. Personally, I don’t see much utility in a section like this, especially if all it says is “No problems here!” In general, I feel that a reviewer should only bring attention to an aspect of the site being reviewed if he/she has something meaningful to say about it (either positive or negative). I would have liked to see a more detailed analysis of whether the name is suitable for the site, whether the name is easy to remember, etc. if it’s brought up at all.

Coding and Validation

According to the HTML validator your HTML is valid, and your CSS is validated.

I just spotted a small error on your credits page; you’re missing the <ul> to begin one of your lists.

I see no problems with your code overall; it’s very clean, orderly and everything has its place. You’ve done a great job!

I do try very hard to keep my coding as clean, semantically logical, and human-readable as possible, so I admit that I wasn’t expecting to see a lot of comments in this area. However, I want to warn against relying too heavily on validation as a surrogate for actually looking at someone’s code. While validation is a great tool, a site that validates isn’t necessarily well-coded: just because a tag is valid doesn’t make it the right tag for the job. Jem has written an excellent article on the pitfalls of validating blindly.

As a side note, I searched all over my “Credits” page for the missing <ul> tag, only to realize that the real was problem was that I forgot a </li> tag. Reviewers should always try to double-check and make sure they’re giving the correct advice.

Browser Compatibility & Usability

Your website is looking consistent in Safari, Opera, Internet Explorer, Firefox, Internet Explorer and Google Chrome.

I understand that your site focuses on graphics and layouts, which is why a link to the “site” page is not present in the navigation under the header image. I still think it would have been a good idea to include it there.

The links in the sidebar with the newest additions are superfluous as these are the same links as are under the header image. The sidebar is nicely organised otherwise, and the site is easy to navigate.

This is probably more a point of personal preference than anything else, but I disagree with comment that my “Newest…” links in my sidebar are superfluous. These links may be redundant, but they link to the main content sections on my site. These are the pages that my visitors are most likely looking for, and I wanted to make it as easy as possible to find them. I know that a lot of people are used to seeing sidebar navigations and might look there first.

Layout

This layout is really clean and professional-looking. I really like the fact that though the layout is slightly large in width, the accented edges and medium-sized text make it look well spaced and balanced. You’ve used a nice range of fonts throughout the layout, from the header image right through to the styling of various headings, which keeps the layout interesting.

I like the small panel in your recent updates that shows your latest additions; that’s a nice touch. The colour scheme has many colours but it’s good to see that you’ve stuck to a select few bold colours for the main parts of the layout.

The current layout is admittedly a point of pride for me, so I’m finding it difficult to critique a positive review. I would actually suggest combining this section of the review with the “Usability” portion, as it seems odd to discuss layout without mentioning such important aspects as legibility or ease of navigation. The purpose of the layout is present the content, after all, and the artistic aspect is not only less important than, but also intricately connected to, its usability.

Content

Layouts

I looked through most of your content before starting this review. I really like the way your site is organised. Your designs aren’t really the style I like but I think they’ve been done well. I would personally like to see a lot more variety since the colours all tend to be on the dark side.

Right now I also don’t see the use in the “newest” links on the right side bar, because they are essentially the same links as the large links under the site header image.

I like that you’ve put in space for a site name in some of the layouts. That is a good feature.

I don’t notice any huge problems with any of the layouts but regarding user-friendliness, the text on Enchanted… and Checkerboard could be made larger because it’s rather small. Both layouts are bold in their own way and to create balance, the text should be at least spaced out with greater line-height or made bigger.

The balance in Picturesque is nice, but I think it would be much better if the stripy background behind the text was removed, which would make it easier to read.

I’d just like to point out that I think Broken is really well done in terms of graphic editing and styling. I find that in comparison, some of your other layouts have images that are a little too saturated. Cam-Whore, Love Letter and Winged are three such examples. Don’t get me wrong, I like red, and the designs are just fantastic, but the colours aren’t to my liking and tend to be a bit blinding. That said, “Broken” is an example of a good layout with softer colours where the graphics don’t appear that harsh. The colour scheme is a good one as well.

Graffiti and Genesis follow the same sort of balance between light and dark colours, which actually brings more attention to the details in the layout. I find the three layouts I mentioned earlier to be a bit “in your face” for want of a better description.

I really like Beautifully Tainted because of the splash of white that detracts from the noisy background – but having said that, the noisy background is a little too noisy. There is some noise in the image already, and having it in the background of the text makes it difficult to read and a little distracting.

WordPress

I think you’ve done a fantastic job with these themes. They look very professional and I like the test posts to show how the theme will look with certain types of posts.

Most designers now code their own WordPress themes, so maybe a few simple templates/themes would be useful for these budding artists. Something simple, with editing allowed, could benefit some of the newer designers out there.

Avatars

These aren’t bad – again these are very well organised. However, I feel like some of them could be improved. This one doesn’t have the best of colours, and I can’t make out the subject of the avatar itself.

Wallpapers

The comments from your layouts also apply here. Since most of these are based off your layout images, I don’t feel like I should point them all out again. However, I think you’ve done a good job including more than just one size for these.

Site

I’ve got no problems with this section.

I must say that I’m quite disappointed with this portion of the review. In reviewing my Layouts section, especially, all of the premade layouts that were mentioned were from 2007 or earlier. That’s 3 years ago! Beautifully Tainted was actually put up in the Fall of 2004! I feel that I’ve grown quite a bit as designer since 2004 or even 2007, and I think it would have been more helpful to me to focus the bulk of the attention on my most recent works. After all, I’m well aware of the shortcomings of some of my previous work, and many of the layouts mentioned are in line to be scrapped anyway.

At the same time, given that so much attention was focused on my older works, I’m surprised that the criticism wasn’t harsher. Many of these layouts are unreasonably thin and small, badly coded, and impossible to read. I think that there are even one or two that still make use of iFrames! This leads me to wonder whether the reviewer really believes that user-friendliness is really a priority.

Originality & Creativity

I think your designs are very creative. I like how you try slightly different styles over your collection as well. Well done for crediting all image sources and programs you’ve used.

With a section named “Originality & Creativity,” I was expecting more comments about… well… originality and creativity. I’m not sure how crediting my resources falls under that heading. In fact, I’m not sure that anything of substance has been said in the section at all. All the reviewer has said is: “I think your designs are very creative,” without really explaining what she found to be creative. If I said that I liked your designs because of the bold color schemes or the intricate blending, you would have some idea of what I liked about them and how you could continue to design in a way that I would continue to like. If I told you that your designs were “creative,” it doesn’t really give you anything to go on.

Organisation & Errors

Very well organised, no problems here.

“Organisation & Errors” confuses me as section. It’s not clear to me why these two things are related, and I’m not sure why “Organisation” is different from “Usability,” which has already been covered in another section. Organization and usability, I think, are both getting at whether the site easy to navigate and whether users can find the information they want without hassle.

I also find it rather odd that “Errors” have their own section. I’m not sure what kinds of errors are usually addressed in this section, but I can’t imagine that it wouldn’t be more logical and intuitive to comment on any errors while talking about the sections of the site in which they are encountered.

Overall Comment

I don’t have much to say overall. I probably made it obvious that your graphics aren’t my style but I found them really impressive. There is a lot of detail in your graphics and they reflect your website’s name and theme very well. I suggest you try softer colours or less harsh colours – your current layout is a great example. As I pointed out with the saturated images, you could use other colours or reduce some of the effects.

I feel that you have great skills with your graphics but that you should try some cleaner styles and layouts a little like your current layout and some of the ones you’ve used for WordPress themes. Those kinds of layouts are the best ones you’ve created that follow general usability guidelines according to colour, font size and so on. Another thing to look into would be access keys and mobile themes. Keep up the great work.

Rating: 5/5

I felt that this review, for the most part, had the right priorities in mind but failed to go beyond a very surface critique of my site. The reviewer’s biggest suggestion was that I “should try some cleaner styles and layouts a little like your current layout and some of the ones you’ve used for WordPress themes,” which is clearly the direction that I had already been heading in (and this should have been clear from my more recent designs). I’m not saying that this review hasn’t offered good advice, but I do feel that I haven’t learned much from it. I think that I should come away from a truly excellent review with something new to think about, and I didn’t feel that way with this one.

Overall Quality of Review: Good

• I’ve moved. Luke and I moved to a new apartment about a month ago. Now, rather than taking the bus as I had done before, I’m a 15-minute walk from campus. The upside is that I’m no longer bound to the sometimes-reliable but always-inconvenient bus schedule; the downside is that I’m actually responsible for when I get to school… which means I no longer arrive 10 minutes early. This means I no longer have my pick of seating, a condition which is made worse by the fact that…

• The auditorium is smaller. This new auditorium is nicer than our old one, but I liked having 2-3 seats to myself, dammit!

• I have a new backpack. A sexy Swissgear backpack with a cell phone holder on the strap. …did I mention the cell phone holder?

Actually, I came across MySpace.com when I was in middle school. It was, sadly enough, one of the only methods available for sharing large media files (and “large” meant something like 300-500mb). Anything larger than 300mb would be split up using a program like WinRAR and uploaded to multiple MySpace accounts, to be joined after downloading. Oh, how far the Internet has come.

A bit of a disclaimer: I don’t claim to be qualified to be giving webdesign advice to anyone. I’ve never been formally educated in such matters, and most of what I know has been picked up in bits pieces from various sources. Having been a webdesign hobbyist for over 10 years and as a frequent visitor of a wide variety of personal sites, fansites, and otherwise “amateur” websites, however, I figured that my opinions might matter to someone (or at least serve to entertain, as the case may be).

And without further ado, the list:

• A lack of breathing space
  I must be claustrophobic or something, but my impression is that I prefer for there to be more padding than most other people find acceptable. While most people these days are pretty good about incorporating breathing space between the different sections of their layouts, many seem to ignore the fact that floated elements (such as icons) also need to have some space around them.

• Links that open in a new window (target="_blank" or other similar incarnations)
  I know that’s a popular practice for websites to open external links in a new window/browser tab– people like to argue that it “keeps more visitors on your site,” and I’ve even had this suggested to me in multiple reviews on rev.iew.me, but I find it to be one of the most annoying practices on the internet. Who are you to tell me how I should interact with my browser? If I want to leave your site, I will whether or not you open up a new window for me. Opening links in new windows also kills usability by removing the “Back” button functionality, so it may actually prevent users from being able to return to your site if they want to. Furthermore, it’s easy enough to for the user to open up a new window when he/she wants to– why do it for him/her?

• “Maintenance mode” and “revamp” signs
  I’ve never really understood the need to make one’s site inaccessible during a revamp. It seems counter-productive, really. As a visitor, I probably came to your site because I had some interest in seeing your content. If I load up your site, and all I see is a “We’ll be right back!” I’m probably going to be disappointed– especially if there’s no indication of when you might be back. If the whole purpose of your site is to present your content, why make that content inaccessible while you revamp? I’ve generally had no problems with doing as much work offline as possible, uploading everything, and then fixing any bugs that arise. For those that use WordPress, plugins like Theme Switch will allow you to preview a new theme while allowing your visitors to continue seeing your old theme. There are even options, such as XAMMP that will allow you to run PHP and MySQL locally on your computer for testing purposes. With all these options, is it really necessary to shut down your site every time you want to put up a new layout?

• Tiny text
  My home computer has a 20″ 1080p monitor. The relatively small monitor size, coupled with the relatively large screen resolution means that my pixels are relatively small. This means that your tiny 10px text is, in all likelihood, significantly smaller for me than it is for you. Now, that might be okay if your site isn’t text-heavy and you don’t really expect your visitors to read what you write. On the other hand, is it really that hard just to up your font size?

• Table layouts, frames/iFrames layouts, image maps, etc.
  Are these really still being used? What year is it? 2000? There are numerous articles on the internet about why each of these is problematic, and I don’t feel the need to reiterate.

• Lack of image optimization
  I thought it was common knowledge that image optimization was important and that slow loading times were unacceptable, but I recently received a review that criticized me for using image optimization. My cable internet package advertises download speeds of 8Mbps. If it takes me a minute to load your site, then we’ve got a problem. And don’t think that fractions of a second don’t count– even a half-second delay can affect user satisfaction.

Well… I’ve been stalling. For no other apparent reason than two small facts: that it has to look professional, and that I actually have to do it. I have a deadline, too. I have to finish it before the end of summer– I assume that means August 16th, the first day of classes. It’s plenty of time, I tell myself, as I surf the internet aimlessly in boredom.

It’s odd, really. I’ve always been a procrastinator, but procrastination is a thing reserved for such painful-but-necessary endeavors as studying for that upcoming test or making a follow-up phone call to that less-than-cooperative patient. This is webdesign we’re talking about– a passion to which I’ve probably devoted thousands of hours over the last 10 or so years for the sheer joy of it. Apparently, I don’t do well when I actually need to design.

Here’s what I have so far:

Comments and critiques are welcome. I tried very hard to keep things conservative– it’s not something I’m used to and I’m not sure how I did on that front. I still need to figure out what to do with the navigation. And code it. And hope that someone (who hopefully won’t be me) puts together the content. …good luck to me?

Pardon the poor quality picture– I took it with a phone camera. But yes. Did you know? Verizon netbooks feature a premium HTML browser!! Isn’t that just amazing? It supports HTML! Shit, my netbook’s browser is only compatible with hand-written sticky notes! I clearly need to get myself one of these.

Oh, and in case you were wondering which “premium HTML browser” these netbooks come with…

Yup. Internet Explorer 6. That’s premium quality right there.