Contest Extension

I understand the necessity for contest extensions. After all the goal is to ultimately provide the CH with a design they love..

However, it would be nice if some sort of compensation or incentive could go to the designers who are freely putting in hours of work only to feel the let down of another week's worth of work ahead for something we may not even be paid for.

Edited by kristijp, 25 March 2014 - 09:48 PM.

The contestholder pay to extend a contest. A contestholder chooses to extend the contest for several reasons but main reason is they do not see the logo design they want or can work with yet. The incentive is to win the contest.....

The issue I see is just when a contest holder is already seeing hundreds of designs from dozens of qualified designers for over a week, yet isn't providing much for feedback or ratings. Does nothing to edit specifics in the brief, etc. then at the end of the contest extends it another week. The incentive is of course always to win the contest, but then it is a bit of a deterant after a week or two of submissions to then know your designs will be lost in a slew of hundreds more to a contest holder who was not quite as active in feedback about what they want to begin with. The designers who are putting in hours of work don't receive anything extra and the contest holders don't really have any extra motivation to work with the designers who are already active.

I don't know, there just seems to be some sort of a miss. I understand it is impossible to please everyone, it just seems like there might be a way to better give designers some credit for their hard work. But again, I realize that's not always a simple solution. Just expressing a frustration I suppose.

If this is the contest I think you refer to ...the ch will be increasing the the contest prize, plus it is a guaranteed winner contest.....

I understand the frustration of working hrs on designs and no feedback, contest extended ect... but in the end it is a contest site and it is up to you the designer to enter these contests.

Our new site will have some very cool and attractive features for designers and contestholders (new site is still being developed and hoping to have it released in June)

Not truly referring to one specific contest I've just been noticing it quite a bit lately. I guess my frustration probably lies more with a lack of interaction by the contest holder leading up to an extension. Looking forward to checking out the new site!

We strongly encourage all contestholders to rate and give feedback. We can't force them but as said we strongly encourage this. It is always told to them that you will have your best results and even attract more designers when you rate and give feedback

Thank you for our quick and thoughtful responses, by the way! I do appreciate being able to have interaction about these kinds of frustrations. And it is fun to participate in these contests as well. Just natural to feel a bit begrudged sometimes in those situations.

Hi,
Just returning to this post to ask about another issue I've just learned about.

Why is it an option for a contest to close and then be re-opened two days later? Especially in a guaranteed contest, once you see the contest close it's more frustrating than ever to see it returned to open for another week (again when the CH has provided 0 feedback, ratings, or changes to the brief).

To be more specific, it would be really helpful if the CH were required to either give feedback or edit/update their brief if extending a contest.

Edited by kristijp, 28 March 2014 - 02:00 PM.

CH needs to be able to reopen contests - If they are not 100% happy then it's better that they re-open rather than abandon. I like your idea of requiring the CH to give feedback but a CH who hasn't given feedback during the contest is unlikely to all of a sudden give good feedback - how would it be enforced? It is really frustrating for us designers sometimes but as far as I can see there is not really a good alternative.

I agree, like in any designer/client situation (on or off this site) the goal is for the client to be 100% happy.

I think the simple solution would be to have Design Contest simply require an update of brief before an extension can be made. If the designer chooses to do that via response to a specific designer/designers then that also helps. Otherwise just a general addition to their brief. Having worked in many many one-on-one situations with clients outside of this site I realize it sometimes takes a bit for a person to really even know what they are looking for. But by the time the end of a contests original end date comes up, they certainly know what they don't want if they haven't chosen a winner. The very least they could do would be to add it to the brief, or something.

Truthfully that would be helpful to not only the designers, but to the CH as well.

My opinion is that on this site, there are hundreds to thousands of extremely talented and capable designers. If after a week or two of submissions, often in the hundreds, a CH is still not seeing what they are looking for, I think it is safe to say that there is something amiss with their brief or lack of communication to the designers. Which in the end both parties suffer because of.

These CH's are paying out only a few hundred dollars for thousands of dollars worth the work by designers, so I don't think it would be too much to just require a bit of feedback/further info if they are going to extend.

Then everyone wins!


**EDIT**
Another quick note is that there is a problem I see as well, not to be too specific, but if a prize amount drastically undershoots compensation for the amount of work required in a design, the CH simply can't expect to have as many responses... In that case, how long are they to be able to extend and extend. If the entries aren't there it's because as designers we know the worth of our work and it's unfair to expect endless entries where 99% of the designers are already working for free. To then have even the winning designer ultimately have worked for less than an hourly rate is a bit off as well...

Edited by kristijp, 28 March 2014 - 08:22 PM.

I really like the point you make, kristijp. I think if you're going to give a contest more time, it's pretty useless if you're not going to give it more direction as well. Hopefully this is something that DesignContest will consider implementing in the near future.

I don't know for sure but I would guess that DC do discuss the dangers of repeat extensions with the Contest Holder.

You are completely correct - It would certainly be in the contest holders interest to update the brief when a contest is extended. I am dubious how effective this will be though because a CH can update the brief at any time during the contest. Even if your suggestion is enforced then there is no way to ensure that the brief update is a valuable. If the ch gives a one line brief and no feedback then any brief update is likely to be equally useless.

That said - I can't see any harm in trying this suggestion out!

I understand your thought process on it, definitely.

I suppose my mentality is just that it can't hurt. Sure, it may not help 100% of the time but even if it just helps half the time, that's better than nothing. Sometimes even a very small update can make a big difference with regards to understanding the direction the CH would like the designers to gear toward. And if after the original contest period the CH isn't seeing what they want, a more clear direction is the most helpful.

Sometimes just one new sentence is enough to send us all in a much more accurate direction.

In the end it can only help the CH to narrow the scope if they aren't getting what they want.. And it does worlds for us designers.

It would be great to see DC trying idea's like this one out. It may help, it may not, but you never know until you try

Thanks for this post. very helpful.