How to improve the Apple Design Awards?
Today is the deadline for the Apple Design Awards and with some hesitation I entered Billable 1.1.2. By process of elimination the only category it really fit into was User Experience. Now while I do consider Billable to be easy to use, this category, based on past winners, is really about applications with a lot of user experience candy (for lack of a better term) which Billable (currently) lacks. I don’t expect a win but I do think getting X number of high ranking Apple employees to take your application for a spin and evaluate it really is a good thing.
Sidenote: When my old MegaManEffect application was all of a sudden getting downloaded thousands of time per day, shown on G4TV, etc. I tracked it down to a single Apple employee whom told 2 friends, whom told 2 friends, etc. a few days before the surge. Lots of influence on that campus. Don’t waste it.
Anyways, I did enter Billable into the ADAs tonight but I can’t help but feel the these awards have lost something over the years and/or haven’t evolved enough. One issue I suspect is a perceived imbalance to the categories and prizes.
Personally, I love the student category; I love the user experience category. I can respect the ‘latest OS X technologies’ category though some years (like this one) it doesn’t really make sense since the OS isn’t even shipping yet. Then the categories start to be domain specific (developer tools, games, scientific computation). While I have no issue with these domains why not a business category or a desktop/internet hybrid category? And where did the open source category go? When I look down at my dock there are lots of quality apps that make this platform a pleasure to use that don’t fall into these 3 slots. Last is the Dashboard Widget category which in my experience draws a common reaction. Generally speaking, people compare the work it takes to win Best Mac OS X User Experience (a category most products are forced into) to Best Mac OS X Dashboard Widget, look at the sweet prize list (see Section VII of the rules) and scream “unfair.” Now if I was entering the ADAs purely for a prize grab I would tend to agree with that statement but I think when developers are staying up late, doing the indie developer thing instead of a “real” (sometimes better paying) job and polishing up those application with the dream of an ADA in their subconscious it’s not the prizes that keep them going, it’s the recognition from Apple and the overall developer community.
Perhaps Apple should shake it up next year. Perhaps they should get rid of the prizes, keep the sweet looking trophies, and expand the awards. How about bringing back best open source application? Introducing best open source code/examples creator, best mailing list contributor, best blog/website, best 1.0 product, best technical book? Let the developers nominate people/products/websites for some of these new awards (since explaining why you are so great in an award application is kind of creepy and it would help to gauge the community’s actual interest).
Giving up that prize pool would be tough (really tough) but in the end I think I’d rather see more of the people who are producing great applications, sharing code, answer questions and participating in the community get recognition for their accomplishments. What do you think?
Posted on: April 23, 2007 – 5:01 am
5 Comments
My guess is – and Apple explicitly state that in the award specs – that a major objective of the exercise is to highlight applications which make OS X shine and can lead to extra sales.
With that in mind I consider it highly unlikely that they’ll diversify the awards even more and the value of each reward would be diminished.
Having an equivalent of the Oscar for assistant sound engineer for Mac software won’ t help anyone.
That said, I do wonder about the Open Source aspect. While applications are rewarded for using open source components, it’s hard to see how a community open source project would be submitted and what to do with a prize in that case. (On the other hand, I noticed that I only use very few open source apps regularly and frequently consider those to be great but lacking the polish you’d expect an award winning application to have.)
My suggestion’s intent isn’t to diminish the perceived value of the awards, its just that they have 6 categories now that I feel don’t have enough coverage. I think they could double that number (to 12 total) without loosing value. I’m saying every idea I posted should be done, I’m just brainstorming.
Some great open source projects that could and have won past ADA awards:
http://www.opensourcemac.org/
Of course you don’t want to diminish the awards’ value but you will. I also don’t think that any of the examples you give would entice people to buy a Mac. “Let’s get a Mac, they have some kick-ass bloggers there and great technical documentation!” doesn’t sound like something people will say. “I want Delicious Library, so I have to get a Mac” seems to be more along Apple’s lines.
I know there are open source products. But which of them would you consider to be a serious contender for one of those awards. The vast majority seem too ugly / geeky / dispensable.
I think ‘extra sales’ (from your original quote) means sales of the winning products, not specifically more Macs.
From the first judging criterion:
“This criterion is measured by asking questions such as, but not limited to: Does the entry compel someone to buy a Mac?”
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