NH Internet Awards

If I could list one thing that incredibly grates on my nerves, it's listening to people who think they're experts about computers and the Internet. About all the great deals they found at the local trade show. About how the new version of Flash has all these great features to calm the angry hordes. About how adding XML in a plain text field of a zone record is gonna solve all our spam problems. Or about the "awards" that our local businesses have won.

Now, granted, I don't think for a second that award shows are honest or about anything besides politics and backscratching (don't even get me started on those that expect payment for site consideration). But when someone calls my job (which hosts a few of the nominated sites), says only "welp, we didn't win last night", and expects me to have a clue what he's talking about, it bears further investigation.

Before I go on, I just want to reiterate that I'd never be caught dead appearing at an awards show, much less consciously submitting my site to one. I got bored with awards, oh, I dunno, back in 1998 when Ghost Sites won its kazillionth web "Hey, Look! The Best Site That Starts With G!". This isn't about loser angst - it's merely a reiteration of critical rebuking you've heard a thousand times before.

The New Hampshire Internet Awards. Oh yes. I've heard about them before, chuckled a few times in the past at their lack of judgment, and moved on without a peep. Today, spurred on by the disappointed "maybe next year" phone call, I can't leave it be. Boy oh boy, looking over the winners makes the baby Jesus cry.

Scrolling down to the bottom of the winner's page (because, you know, putting the "Best of Show" 10 pages past the point of boredom is a testament of good design), we see that the winner of "overall design, conception and creativity in a Web site, personal or commercial" is Lavallee / Brensinger Architects. To quote one of the judges, "Among the best Flash-based Web sites I've seen."

I should have known. I should have known a Flash site would win.

In a world where web accessibility is all the buzz, where the government issues laws that state agencies must conform to, it makes obvious, perfect, "duh!" sense to issue the "Best of Show" to a site that ignores even a modicum of disability. No text-only links (hell, there's no text anywhere). The spinner/image bar at the bottom makes it nearly impossible for arthritic, slow-moving, or elderly hands to pinpoint anything of import. The phone numbers are illegibly small. Big blocks of text which should be copyable aren't. There's no way to bookmark a specific page you're interested in. This is not an award-winning site: it's a site sorely in need of a redesign.

Checking out the rest of the awards, with an eye toward usability and accessibility, only makes things worse: well-designed third place entries are pre-empted by overly-designed incompetents. These awards, and their winners, are an art museum: they'll wow you with colors, glitz, and movement, but they serve no other purpose then to sit on a wall somewhere collecting dust.

Listen, I don't imagine the award show will get any smarter. But, please try. Commenting on stuff that has, years ago, proven to be bad design ("nice intro page") does not make you look smart. "Pretty cool application" is a comment you'd make about the latest b-link on a blog somewhere, not on a third place winner in the "best of technology" section. The judges don't even know that "Flash" is a proper name that should be capitalized (you can't xerox a xerox on a Xerox, nor can you rollerblade, white-out errors, or google for answers).

Man alive, you're making New Hampshire look like idiots.