Critical of your own professionals? Know how to do things better?

It's all very well if your clients criticise as you always feel that they don't know what they are talking about in tech/design/interactive terms, bless them. But when your own colleagues start criticising, it's a bit like a road-rage flashpoint! Let's try and learn how to deal with some of this criticism to make life easier. Plus remember, this sort of undermining of a team or team members and its consequences is the project managers' responsibility too. You'll turn a blind eye at your cost.

If you don't think this can be a problem for you, see how many are happy to point the critical finger. Many are fellow developers. See www.nearperfect.co.uk for a plethora of criticisms. Clear, short content is king at www.goup.co.uk, and problems with social media icons are explored in www.jbiwebdesign.co.uk.

There are, of course, good design tenets that we all try to follow and often the criticisms are well founded but what happens when you are aware of the tenets but circumstances stop you applying these? Then the criticisms cut deep.
Phil Sturgeon's recent blog, Understanding Circumstances, is a refreshing, albeit straight talking (meaning here, full of expletives), response to such tech criticisms that will make you grin. Do look at it. Understandably he provokes quite a few honest replies too. He wants critics to think about the circumstances the iMedia product is created in because those affect the performance and design whatever the developer might want to use as an alternative. He appeals for sympathetic understanding of the constraints people might be working under that can lead to such poor end results.

So, we have those that need educating about good and bad design tenets who can benefit from all the advice available as per the first set of links we suggest above, and then we have those that know but are not allowed to apply the tenets because of the circumstances arising from the business field they are in, the stakeholders' or clients' power over them etc. We think this is valid info for anyone in the iMedia field. Yes, let’s understand more before we point fingers.