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.

UK Digital Economy Bill April 2010

This bill has caused uproar in many circles as it was pushed through with seemingly little debate last night in what's known as the wash up period as Parliament moves to dissolution in the build-up to the election.

Andy raised a few issues about this bill in another posting recently and perhaps it is interesting that the clause that directly concerned many photographers was deleted. But with many aspects to cover across diverse developers and users of digital communication/business, there were many hats to be thrown into the ring of debate. Too late now! This was voted on and passed late last night with a seeming deal between Labour and Conservatives.

To see what issues might affect you take a look at a summary of the clauses at The Quick Guide to all 45 measures and a shorter summary at services.parliament.uk.

The strength of reaction can be tangibly measured in Ben Camm-Jones' comments on Web User where he casts shame on all MPs for the bill and shame on the very few MPs who even bothered to vote despite voiced concerns by over 20,000 people to their respective MPs.

Gary Marshall too makes his feelings very clear at Tech Radar where he states that digital democracy clearly doesn't work!

Will the bill affect you or your business?