It’s not uncommon for us to pass around web designer / studio web sites at PRPL. Someone tweets out a blog post, sends in a job application, we see something on a CSS gallery–however these sites reach our computers the result can typically end the same way: we start playing [for a lack of a better on-the-spot name] the 10-second game.

What’s the 10-second game? Someone finds a continuity error on the page and we challenge each other to find the design flaw, programming error or UI anti-pattern in 10 seconds or less upon page load. What happens if we find it? We laugh, high-five, and the process usually will snowball into tearing apart a website. What happens if we don’t find it? We train ourselves to look for these things in the future.

This competition doesn’t always go forward, however, there are sites out there that blow us away. Inevitably for me personally, they get bookmarked and become a role model; a standard rule for how a project should be considered "done". It simply blows my mind that companies, designers and even programmers can write off aesthetic problems as acceptable or, perhaps worse, not even notice them.

Sure, this is partially a rant of, "Don’t call yourself a designer if you don’t take pride in your work," but also an introspection of myself. Are we too critical of our peers, or are they simply lazy or uncaring? Perhaps it’s a difference in company culture, or a rushed job that reflects poorly across the entire brand? There are excuses miles deep for any small issue, but it’s like sand in my eyes–I just can’t see past the problems and it discredits my entire experience.

The take away? I’m not going to explicitly name one, just voicing my thoughts.