How to properly evaluate the work of a web designer?

zhmenia2012-06-20 13:41:41

Design

zhmenia, 2012-06-20 13:41:41

By what criteria is the work of a designer most often evaluated today? How to at least approximately predict the amount of time (and, accordingly, money) spent on its work? And in general, does it make sense to set yourself these limits?

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8 answer(s)

oENDark, 2012-06-20
@oENDark

Be sure to evaluate the quality of the layout structure. All layers should be named as they should (usually by the name of the element - header, menu, content, map). See that everything is laid out in folders, and not in layers, anything can happen.

s0rr0w, 2012-06-20
@s0rr0w

There is no point in setting boundaries. The designer's work is not typed by any parameters or metrics. Trying to evaluate always fails.
Risk optimization can be as follows: a certain art director who has practical experience as a designer and a manager should stand above the designer. It will prevent the designer from wasting time aimlessly picking his nose and looking for inspiration. It is the art director who minimizes the risks and returns the relationship to a productive course. If it is a group of designers, then the chances of completing the work become much higher.
So that there is no option with an abandoned work, you need to let the designer create and completely trust him. Any requirements for alterations should be constructive, not ask to paint all the buttons blue, but say that people usually associate gray with inactive, you need to either more clearly emphasize the activity of the button by changing its color, or replace it altogether with something else , which clearly indicates further action. The art director can say the same. Especially it is not necessary to draconize designers with statements that my brother / matchmaker / godfather / acquaintance looked at the layout and expressed his deepest “buee”, and that everything needs to be redone. It is very rare for third-party people to understand design, even though they see the opposite, so it is highly undesirable to bring such “experts” as a test group.

karenishe, 2012-06-20
@karenishe

It's not entirely clear what the question is about? About how to evaluate the experience of a designer in monetary terms? Or about how to evaluate the quality of the result of a designer's work?
I will answer both.
If you are an end client, then you need design in order to improve the attitude of visitors to your site and, as a result, make more money. If you are an employer, then you need a designer to make a design that you can sell to the end client.
In other words, the cost of a designer should in any case depend on how much money he can help you bring in. To help, because designing is just part of the process of making money.
As for evaluating the quality of a web designer's work, it is obvious that no one has canceled "like" or "dislike" yet. But it all depends on the task. We must not forget that design is designed to make money, which means that those who can potentially pay this money should like it.
A common problem faced by clients when they demand something they like from a designer without thinking about the preferences of potential payers.
By time: designers are creative people — today I can work, tomorrow I can’t, it’s difficult to predict. It is clear that, on average, the design concept of one site should not take a designer more than two weeks (taking into account the “hack”, seeing the ceiling and pumping skills for writing on habr, etc.), if we are not talking about something super- duper labor-intensive (the main thing is to be able to assess how much super-duper it really is :)
If you are not a designer, then proceed from how much money you have for the task, how much of them you are willing to give to the designer and look for who do you like the most in terms of the level of work.
If you are a designer, determine for yourself a monthly fee for which you do not mind spending your life on others, multiply by two (well, or three) and strive for this income :)

Anatoly, 2012-06-20
@taliban

Of course there are, and everyone constantly uses them: “I like it” and “I don’t like it, let’s have another option.”
I have a lot of familiar designers / artists, and they have never heard another assessment in their lives, well, except that “generally cool, but I would like more ...”, but I attribute this to the second =)

ainu, 2012-06-21
@ainu

Signs of great inexperience can be seen without a grid: non-standard font, too wide layout, layout made in Corel (and in a raster with a width of 3000 pixels), a background that cannot be cycled from top to bottom (did not take into account that sites also scroll down), lack of space for simple text (did not take into account that the sites have internal pages where there should not be a beautiful heap of the latest news and other attributes of the main page).
Indirect signs of a little inexperience (seen in the layout) are the absence of folders in the layers, the guides are between pixels (Shift was not held), the width of the blocks in the center (for example, the main content) is equal to an odd number of pixels.
Based on the foregoing, a neatly and lovingly made design is easy to make up (and getting a working website is the goal of this whole undertaking, design is not needed without it). Tyap-blunder is sometimes impossible to make up in principle.

Alexander, 2012-06-20
@Alexx_ps

There is no point in typing and setting frames. Show the designer examples of what you like (preferably from your area, otherwise they will always order the design of a construction company and show the apple promo site). After that, talk to him to make sure that you understand each other, that the designer understands the task. Next, ask the designer to take it easy and quickly throw in a very rough sketch of how they see your design.
These are the stages you need to move on, making adjustments as you work, and not after your design has already been created, laid out, programmed, and launched in public for two weeks ...

niko83, 2012-06-20
@niko83

It's the little things that make the difference, and a good designer knows that . And when he works, he thinks over every detail. Therefore, he will immediately answer why there are elements in a line here and not here, there is a shadow here but not here, rounded here and not here, etc. since he thought about it all at the development stage.
And as they wrote above, the design is not an artist. It is more of a technical specialty with its own laws and regulations.

Quiz, 2012-06-20
@Quiz

In addition, I will express one more small fad (partly as a person who directly works with the layout).
After looking at the organization of the layers in the layout document, pay attention to the grid, proportions, and padding. If the layout contains elements of size, for example, 237x49 and dancing indents between blocks of 7-8-9-12-14 pixels, if the layout uses some absolutely non-standard font (if its condition was not agreed in advance), then you 95% chance you are dealing with a bad designer.
In short, see the grid. If there is no grid in the layout, get ready for problems.