I hope that 'winning an award' isn't what is motivating most designers here.

Feels like most sites that are listed high on awwwards and fwa are promotional sites for stuff with janky parallax scrolling, huge images/videos and without much content that makes sense. Where are the awards for "real" websites that regular people actually use?

Can we please just get past the title and do some interpretive reading? You know, instead of acting like a herd of mindless drones that jump on every opportunity they get to white-knight for the user? There's some actually useful stuff in this article.      There's some good pointers there on how to create a website that has the potential to "win awards". This means a site that leaves an impression. That has people going "wow". That's a good thing.     Or we can just keep chastising a good article. You know, instead of actually interpreting what's in there and applying it in a positive way.    Sheesh.   .edit: Hm. I realise that might've been a bit harshly worded. I'm not going to retract my words though. This is as good a place for people to start interpreting properly as any.

I like Bobby McKenna's perspective on this:

Awards

Who gives a shit.

Step 1: win award

Step 2: design website

I feel like this is akin to "Step by Step: How to Win a Grammy"

@ the holier-than-thou attitude towards these types of sites...

Everyone understands that when a website is in a situation where its users are arriving already looking to complete a certain task or get certain information, then the design should focus on getting them to their goal as quickly/easily as possible.

But a lot of sites aren't in that situation. The users coming to them aren't already invested in doing or learning anything in particular, they're often just browsing around and following links from tweets/articles. Those users will be gone in seconds if what they see doesn't grab their interest and engage them. In these situations, the design should focus on being unique and stimulating in order get them interested enough to stick around and actually absorb the content, gain a memorable impression of the subject, and even share it with others.

Yeah, the FWA's and awwwards and the like tend to focus on sites in that kind of situation, but you can't really argue that many of them aren't basing everything around the users, just like you advocate for.

Yeah, I feel the same.

Like other award shows like the Grammys, I've never been a fan of Design Awards.

Makes me think - "Ohh, thanks for the pat on the back, self appointed gatekeeper".

And even that isn't true.

In many cases, one usually has to pay for the privilege of “possibly” being judged by these groups of self-appointed gatekeepers, and industry/ agency types love patting each other on the back for these awards.

But sure, those big agency trophy cases and walls. lol

A more valuable use of time is to focus on users not self-appointed judges.