The HersheyCause crew have come out with a great new resource. In about fifteen minutes, you can self-test your web design sense in a fun, educational format. Try it, learn, maybe, you are like me, be somewhat humbled.

Andy Goodman and R Christine Hershey produced this site to promote a forthcoming on-line design class, which no doubt will meet with great success. More so than when working on database design and architecture, many projects we have include decision-makers who start by saying they don't have a lot of design sense, and yet somehow stubbornly want to arm wrestle with the designers they have hired over color, navigation, typography and everything else. It's a problem.

I'm not speaking as a designer myself. I'd be interested in others' experience with two related issues: first thow to include organizational decision-makers as well as the design professional in the design process and be fair to both. Seond, how to effectively transfer knowledge and responsibility to the organizational web master once a site goes live and still build in guardianship of the design itself.

In any event, I would recommend going through the test here and giving it some thought. OK, I didn't agree with all of their scoring, but I'm not going to argue with the teacher over my grade, especially given the thoughtful reasoning they give to each question and answer. Whether you take the forthcoming class or not, it might make sense to have your web design project team try the test together as a warm-up exercise or ice-breaker, just to see where everyone stands. I'm going to recommend it for our next project.

HersheyCause produce some really useful stuff. I try to leaf through my print copy of their an earlier Goodman and Hershey collabration, Why Bad Presentations Happen to Good Causes, whenever I have to put together a new slide show, just as a reminder. And their Communications Toolkit and Why Bad Ads Happen to Good Causes also have lots of good stuff. You can download all of these from their web site, which is pretty cool in itself. In addition to the content, the writing and production style of each give wonderful examples of how to create training materials that come alive, whether using them on your own or trying to guide a team. While taking the test, check out these earlier publcations too.