I read a post today that really opened my eyes to how you need to critically look at your design, or better still have a qualified yet unbiased third party do it for you.
Janko wrote about how he feels twitter needs another redesign and goes on to highlight the different sections he thinks just don’t work. Now you may not agree with him (indeed a quick read of his comments tells you that a fair amount of people didn’t) but it was the fact he was able to pick up on these issues and to ask questions about them.
Personally speaking I saw the new layout and the only thing that annoyed me was the login on the main page is different from the login when you are on a profile page, I wasn’t looking at it critically enough to notice the things that he noticed. And if I can’t look critically at an interface I use all the time yet have no real vested interest in, how I am supposed to look critically at the design of pages I do have an interest in?
Can you ever really look at a design with complete objectivity and highlight shortfalls? I don’t think you can, and what is the next option? You could get friends or co-workers to look at the design, they will be more objective than you could be but they still won’t be completely critical, human nature dictates that they just can’t be. So do you pay for someone’s design services and let them cast an eye over your work? If you do that then do you not stand a chance of getting back a list of changes that are only there to justify someone’s fee?
It is all a bit complicated if you ask me.