Whether you are participating in our 2016 national web design contest or not, here is a brief overview of the contest. It is intended to provide you with a sense of what this contest is about.
Each team will be asked to complete a series of website tasks that will test their:
- Creativity
- Web Design skills
- User experience and user interface skills
- Web development skills
- Critical thinking and problem-solving skills
- Ability to collaborate with your peers
- Agility and adaptability to client needs
- Initiative and entrepreneurial skills
- Presentation skills
Here is a brief overview of the specific contest tasks:
- Specifically, you will be asked to create and develop a simple website consisting of the following distinct set of website tasks as outlined by the client in the work order.
- Create and design a storyboard including wireframe based on input from the client as outlined by the work order.
- Create and design a prototype as outlined in the work order by the client.
- Modify, edit and select the graphic images to incorporate from the base images provided by the client.
- Design and develop Web pages with the following components in mind; look and feel, function, navigation, page layout, fonts, color schemes, all graphic elements, and forms as outlined by client in the work order.
- Design and develop responsive Web pages with Web Accessibility and Web standards in mind; they must be WAI compliant and pass W3C validation, and be cross browser compatible as outlined by the client in the work order. This means they must also scale properly for mobile devices.
- Incorporate JavaScript for validation of the form as outlined by the client in the work order.
- Demonstrate your knowledge in the areas of web business including; branding, web marketing and search engine optimization (SEO) as outlined by the client in the work order.
- You will be asked to present your Web Design and Development Company(your team) to the review team. In short, why should we hire your team? You will also present your resume as part of this interview.
- You will also be asked to share your scaffolding of process including storyboard, wireframe and prototype.
- You will also be allowed to ask questions of the contest organizers and the client.
This is a quick overview of our contest rules:
- All completed websites and their related files will be submitted on a USB thumb drive that we will provide.
- Teams will not be allowed to use external resources (there is no Internet connectivity in the competition area and all teams will refrain from such access via their own connection). Note: If the contest supervisor or judges observe you using cell phones or connecting to the Internet or texting during the competition, you will be disqualified.
Note also that teams will be allowed to ask 2 questions (in writing) if they encounter technical issues. Responses will be provided in writing by the Web Design contest officials on site. Only 2 questions maximum per team are allowed. - Breaks, including lunch: lunch (including sodas) will be provided around noon on site. If you need to use the restroom you need to inform one of the Web Design contest officials. Bottled waters are allowed and we encourage you to stay hydrated, snacks are allowed but not provided. Bring your own prior to the contest.
- Images will be provided by the contest committee at the start of the contest and no third party images will be allowed. You may use your own original graphics (only if created on site during the competition) and you may edit the images we provide.
- No pre-built templates are to be used. All components must be created and coded on site from scratch. This includes frameworks such as Bootstrap and jQuery.
- The focus of this contest is on client side technologies (for example, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript). The latest versions are preferred. Remember to test your pages in multiple browsers. Remember you can use browser device emulation capabilities to simulate how your pages will appear on mobile devices. Judges will be testing them in various browsers and on various devices.
- No server side scripting is to be included in the submitted materials.
- All materials submitted are to be free of malware. If you submit malware, you will be penalized a significant number of points.
NOTE: Virus Scan your folders prior to submission to the USB drive. Submitting a virus or spyware on the USB drive is grounds for losing almost all your points. If you do not have updated Virus Scan software installed on your computer it is your responsibility to tell us so. Tell us this when we ask for your software license and we will assist you. - Use of any Dreamweaver template is not allowed (yes, we will know). This also applies to templates in other tools (including jQuery Theme Roller and similar).
- Use of jQuery or other libraries is not allowed. Build your code from scratch; demonstrate your knowledge of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
- As a general rule, tables should only be used to display tabular data; they should not be used for placement/ layout of text or images (use CSS instead).
We hope this brief overview of the contest and associated rules gives you a clearer understanding of what our web design contest is all about.
