Readers’ Poll: What’s Your Achilles’ Heel?

Readers’ Poll: What’s Your Achilles’ Heel?

on Oct 5th 2011 with 17 comments

We all have our weaknesses, links in the chain which need improvement. You’ll probably know where your strengths lie, but what about areas in your web designer’s skill set which need working on? Let us know in this poll and we’ll do our best to help!

Think of this as a “what would you most like to be learning at the moment” kind of a question..

 
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Hi there! My name's Ian Yates. Welcome to Webdesigntuts+ :)  

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  • Vinay Bhat

    Most definitely, it has got to be theoretical knowledge. Coding is easy, so is pulling something out of Photoshop. But the real knowledge, which really makes a design stand out, is really necessary. And that’s what I have to work on.

    • http://www.snaptin.com Ian Yates
      Author

      Great feedback Vinay – just what I’m after. Thanks!

    • David

      Agree

    • Some Guy

      It’s great you understand that — that’s way for enlightenment!

  • Pingback: Readers’ Poll: What’s Your Achilles’ Heel? | Shadowtek | Hosting and Design Solutions

  • Ian Rock

    It’s not surprising to see coding out in front in the polls – seeing as this is webtuts after all.
    I assume your looking for content suggestions for web tuts though… so here goes! :)

    Personally I love it when we get a series of tutorials that cross over into net tuts.
    However a lot of these only deal with knocking up a fictional PSD in one session on webtuts, before handing it over to nettuts to hammer in the nuts and bolts in 11 sessions. Superb as it is mind you!

    Taking this a step further it would be great for webtuts to have more of an input in the design concepts and principles from the absolute start. i.e. client wants, aspirations for the site, branding, typography, profiling of end users needs, etc.

    How about taking a worthy charity from web zero to web hero as a series of Premium Tuts? :D

    • Joshua Briley

      Ian, that is a great idea. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a design tutorial that showed how a particular design solved a client problem. I’d love to see how others tackle the issue of interpreting a real creative brief (which is usually incredibly vague and uninformative).

      I’d also really like to see how other designers go about “selling” the design to the client. This is always a challenge, because many clients I’ve dealt with seem to look at their design mockups from a very emotional slant as opposed looking at them from the “will this help me accomplish my goal” point of view.

  • Strider

    Since i have a degree in electrical engineering/computer science coding is quite easy for me. Design is the hardest part of my workflow.

    When i make a design i look at it and I can see that something is missing for it to be great, just can’t figure out what it is. That’s why i come here to learn stuff so i can be a better designer :)

    • http://www.sagie.es cesar

      That´s my case too.

      I recently came across Sitepoint´s book “Principles of Beautiful Web Design” which helped me a lot. Great stuff :D

  • kankuro

    I’m not good in photoshop or AI or fireworks….

  • http://arzone Some Guy

    I’m good at coding and can design a bit, but often have problems trying to find something new, but my biggest enemy is that I’m horrible Business man.

    So I need to work on both creativity and buisness skills.

  • http://www.paul-ferguson.co.uk Paul

    Interesting that JS is a big player in the poll, I love the PSD end of the spectrum, but certainly for me its Java Script I suffer most with and where I feel I need to get a grasp.

    Then again maybe I should remember to check out Net tuts more often than I do as things like SEO and API are another area I need to read more on.

  • http://oxygren.com Benjamin

    Huge problem I come across is ‘time management/under quoting’ it’s not that I work slow, its that I am constantly under estimating the time it would take for certain projects and therefore under quoting and taking longer then anticipated. This would be my biggest achilles heel, as everything else I can find pre-built and/or bluff my way through. However other areas such as javascript & jQuery are areas I need improvement, but I wouldn’t say they undo me.

    • http://www.snaptin.com Ian Yates
      Author

      Time management issues and the effect they can have on quoting (and therefore your whole enjoyment and satisfaction for any given project!) can be a huge stumbling block for any freelancer. It’s definitely an area worth exploring in future articles – thanks a lot for your input Benjamin!

      • http://oxygren.com Benjamin

        My pleasure Ian. It’s certainly something I’ve noticed with a lot freelancers, we all have a habit of under quoting to get jobs because a lot of clients don’t like you to work by the hour. It’s something I’m working on slowly – but you’re right, as soon as you under quote a project because your clairvoyant skills aren’t what they need to be, it takes the fun out of the project!

  • Ricardo

    I had a feeling that javascript code would be the front runner. There are clearly more than enough free tutorials out there for anyone to become an expert in javascript or jquery and they’re very easy to find. So the question is where is the disconnect? My experience has been that I try my best to run through javascript tutorials and more specifically jquery tuts but inevitably I lose focus and my mind wanders… I might follow along for a few days and bang out the exact code that they tell me to and manage to get whatever functions up and running in order for it to work, but the actual concepts behind the code never stick. I suspect most likely because I’ll go away from practicing it for several weeks and almost have to start over again from scratch… I think it’s a matter of figuring out a way to bridge that classic gap of a coders mind vs a designers mind… How do you make coding more intriguing to a person who is more artistically centered? Is that even possible?

  • David

    For me Creativity is the biggest issue, it is very easy for me to learn stuff but it is very hard to be creative, to design unique designs, i think i don’t know how to inspire from other people without copying them…