What are your design weaknesses or flaws?

[Matt]

I thought I’d like to start a thread to get to know some of the weaknesses or flaws of designers. Something along the lines of "Not enough documentation".

My weaknesses:
My code is usually indented oddly, and I tend to not fix it. It looks right to me, but nobody else.
I tend to ignore documenting anything in my PHP/Ruby/Python/C#/ColdFusion. Though, in HTML and CSS, I have comments that even indicate where a certain div ends.
I’m a better programmer and graphics designer than I am a web designer.
I’m scatterbrained.
I tend to get vocal with clients who decide to scrap an idea a week after I announced that I was finalizing the design and backend-logic.
I rely heavily on WordPress for many of my contracts (I consider this a flaw).
I can’t wrap my head around MVC, for some odd reason. I’ll work on this later this week I guess.
I don’t understand why margin’s collapse due to floats. I think this is a flaw, and I really should go learn why they do.
I don’t understand why people get so mad when you use an empty div to clear a float. I’ve always done it and it works, gosh darn it.
I’ve had to follow Section 508 on my last 3 projects, consecutively. One of my clients also wanted a timed form and a couple flash movies. The fact that I gripe is a flaw, though, couldn’t we get someone else to watch those stupid movies and type the dialogue?
I’m never satisfied with the finished result.

How about you guys?

[Indubitable Turtle]

My main flaw is communication. It’s something that I’m working on, but it was very noticeable on my last project. That’s a glaring problem that I HAVE to fix immediately.

My other main other weakness is procrastination. I was going to work on that this week, but haven’t gotten to it yet… :lol:

Besides those two huge ones, I need to work on polishing my designs. I have a weird tendency to notice all the littlest things after a design goes live, and keep picking at it. Maybe I’m the oxymoron of the day: a lazy perfectionist.

I don’t know nearly enough PHP. So far I’ve stuck to my strengths: semantic XHTML and CSS, but I really need to learn PHP in more depth than just syntax. Same goes for JavaScript.

I also tend to get sidetracked easily, and wind up spending hours perfecting something that isn’t really even needed. Verbosity is an issue sometimes, too. I should probably learn to express myself more simply.

Hell, I have way too many flaws to post here. :oops:

[creativestable]

I hate touching a site after it has gone live… maintenance and small fixes drive me INSANE…. usually when a client comes back to add something a year later, I would much rather re-build the site from scratch… it feels dirty adding things onto it.

[Matt]

"creativestable" wrote:

I hate touching a site after it has gone live… maintenance and small fixes drive me INSANE…. usually when a client comes back to add something a year later, I would much rather re-build the site from scratch… it feels dirty adding things onto it.

I’m the same way. "You want to update that!? Just spring for the $300 renew cost, mmmkay?"

To explain, I have a renew cost where clients can renew a year later for $300 (flat fee, but the amount of content has to be at or less than what I gave them). It can be good and bad. Small sites are $300, but the really large sites take a lot of time to flesh out. You get a lot of traffic back, but it becomes some very hard work in the end. I recommend renew rates, though, again for the traffic.

[Matt]

New flaw: I apparently have an aura that makes clients not want to talk to me. For some reason, they say do X and then leave and I don’t hear back from them for about a month.

[Matt]

"ikthius" wrote:

just a very busy guy in a very busy company.

Same, except replace guy with "woman", and company with "Non-profit organisation".

[Indubitable Turtle]

Y’know, I think the thing that gets me in the most trouble is that I tend to agree to things in person or over the telephone without thinking about it, just being agreeable. Then I wonder how the heck I got myself into that situation. I have to constantly remind myself that I’m the professional here, and I don’t HAVE to agree to everything they throw at me.

Apparently an existing client thinks I’m available at his beck and call to write web copy for him, and that’s included in regular maintenance. Now I have to figure out how to tell him politely yet firmly that this is not, in fact, the case. My fault for not clarifying what I do and do not do as maintenance!

Another of my design weaknesses I just thought of earlier is that I often conceptualize the code of a site in my head as, or before, I design it in Photoshop. At first it doesn’t sound so bad, but I get sidetracked thinking to myself about how I’m going to get around some little (theoretical) detail that hasn’t even come up yet, when I should be bringing out design ideas in Photoshop. If that makes sense?

[Author]

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