14 Peer Review

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Peer review is an important life skill. Do it effectively and with tact, be positive and insightful and help the person see things about their site that they did not catch, from effective design and user experience point of view to mistakes or better solutions to implementing code.

Be Constructive and Instructive

Be positive, let your partner know what you liked. Praise, comment, and correct in that order. Make positive comments about the design, its execution and overall effectiveness of the site before explaining what does not meet expectations. Look at the code to see if it is properly annotated, well organized and valid. You will run their code through validator (and css validator. I expect that the site was already valid HTM and CSS. If not, it should be by the time you are finished.

Instruct if your partner needs to understand things that you are aware of and they are not. You can help them grow in the same way that you grew this semester. Sharing is caring, and it is always good to spread the love. You really know your stuff when you can teach it!

Critical Review Examples

If you are in need of an example please check out Web Standards Sherpa, a website dedicated to constructive criticism, to highlight standards compliant solution that solve real world problems. You can see articles that review the headlines of the New York Times and there are many others, including a critique of their own site.

The goal of WebStandardsSherpa.com is to provide web professionals the opportunity to receive feedback, glean advice and learn best practices from experts in the field to help improve the quality of their own work. It’s very instructive to see professional and pedagogically useful critique at work.

Reacting to Criticism

You do not have to incorporate your classmate’s suggestions. Trust your own judgement about your design, determine which issues are most important, though pay attention to comments if they are made by more than one peer, and get another opinion if you aren’t sure about something.

User Testing

One way to get feedback is to user test your site. You will use the SilverBack application to record the user test. Download the application, which is free for 30 days.

Doing a user test is straight forward. Create a project, and create a session which will record the your peer review partner’s “user interaction” as they go through your website.

Peer Review Check List

Be constructive, not just “yes” or “no”. Goint through these lists will help you dot your “i”s and crossed your “t”s, so to speak.

Using the HTML5 boilerplate should help to make your site work for most browsers. Try to test your site on Chrome, Firefox and Safari for Mac and Edge for Windows.

Help Your Partner. Everyone has learned a lot but not everyone will have learned everything equally well. You have the opportunity of helping your partner fixissues with their website where they may not have figured out the best way to do something. We are in this all together, and being able to help someone is rewarding initself.

Print out or fill in online the two pdf documents: the questions below and Adobe’s website analysis. Evaluate and answer questions. Send them to your peer review partner and CC me. If your partner has not yet finished coding their site they need to coordinate with you when it is finished, so you can do the review.

  • Intuitive reaction

    1. Take the five-seconds test. What’s your immediate response? Your split second intuition is often canny in its ability to present an accurate picture that can get lost in more deliberated responses.
    2. Describe how the site make you feel.

  • Clarity of Communication

    1. Does the clearly communicate to its intended audience?
    2. Is the experience seamless?
    3. Do the pictures and the design facilitate the communication?

  • Accessibility

    1. Are any of the pictures too large or too small? If so, fix them.
    2. Is there an easily discoverable means of communicating with the author or administrator?
    3. Is the HTML semantic (can screen readers to navigate the site)?

  • Consistency

    1. Does the site have a consistent and clearly recognizable “look-&-feel”?
    2. Do repeating visual themes to unify the site?
    3. Is it consistent even without graphics or an external style sheet? (it can happen)

  • Navigation

    1. Are the links obvious in their intent and destination?
    2. Is there a convenient, obvious way to maneuver among related pages, and between different sections?

  • Design & maintenance

    1. Does the site make effective use of hyperlinks to tie related items together?
    2. Are there dead links? Broken scripts? Pages that are not completed or look unfinished?
    3. Is page length appropriate to site content?

  • Code

    1. Is the code clean and well documented?
    2. Is it optimized for Search Engines (SEO)?
    3. Does it have Google’s Analytics code?
    4. Does it use the HTML5 boilerplate?
    5. Does the HTML validate? Use the Unicorn Unified Validator Service and Check the HTML and CSS. You are to report your findings in your conclusion.

  • HTML5 and CSS3 goodness

    1. List the CSS3 features used. Were they used to good effect?
    2. Is the HTML5 semantically correct?
    3. Is the website future proof? Does it use media queries? Check to see how it works on the iPhone/Android?

  • Overall Assessment?

    Make a list of fixes, suggestions and possible solutions to any issue that came up when assessing the website using the aforementioned considerations.

    Send this report to your partner later today, if you need more time to write it up than class provides, and send a copy to me.

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