Reference
How judges read a submission
The maker’s hardest skill isn’t building — it’s reading your OWN work the way a judge will, against each pillar, before you ship. A pass on one pillar is not a pass overall; judge them all. Here are the five generic pillars and a pre-ship checklist. Open the judging lab →
- Experienced in ~3 minutes
A judge should reach a satisfying moment fast. This isn’t “make it shorter” — it’s “put your best idea first.” Front-load the payoff and move depth behind the demo.
- Self-contained & works offline
It must run with no network and no required account — a judge may review it on a plane. Bundle everything it needs inside the app; a first-run fetch or a sign-in wall is the classic failure.
- Your own work, with credits
The creative core must be yours. Borrowed art, sound, or data is fine when the license allows reuse AND you credit the author — a public dataset with a credit is allowed, an uncredited CC-BY asset is not.
- Inclusive & accessible
Meaning must never ride on colour alone (add a shape, pattern, or label), and support the system screen reader and large text. Test with a colour-blindness simulator.
- A fresh idea
“Fresh” isn’t “a brand-new genre” — it’s one honest twist that’s clearly yours. A re-skin (new art, identical rules) reads as unoriginal.
Judge your own work before you ship
- The three-minute cutCan a judge reach the payoff in three minutes? If not, cut the demo down to your single best idea.
- Airplane modeTurn off the network and quit any account. Does it still open and run? A first-run fetch or a sign-in wall fails here.
- The Credits screenList every borrowed asset — its author and its license. Keep an attribution log AS you build so nothing is missed.
- Colour is never aloneFor every colour cue, is there a second one (shape/pattern/label)? Run a colour-blindness simulator and the screen reader.
- One honest twistName the one rule that makes your entry yours, not a re-skin of a classic.
- The current rulesContests change their rubric every year. Read the OFFICIAL current rules before you rely on any checklist — including this one.
Where this idea comes from
Taste, written down
In the late 1970s the German industrial designer Dieter Rams wrote down ten principles of good design. Each begins “Good design is …”, and the last is “as little design as possible”. His motto was “less, but better” (Weniger, aber besser). It is probably the most famous design rubric there is.
One thing to hold: A single page with ten sentences, each starting “Good design is …”.
Why it matters: In 2002 the programmer Paul Graham argued in “Taste for Makers” that taste is not merely subjective: good design, he wrote, is simple, timeless, solves the right problem, is suggestive, and is often slightly funny. A contest rubric is an attempt to write taste down before the entries arrive. It can catch an empty Credits screen; it cannot tell you whether the idea is any good. That is one reason contests rewrite their rules every year.
What we don’t know: Whether taste is more than fashion is still argued. When David Weinberger interviewed Graham at Harvard in 2006, he asked whether taste is really as timeless as Graham suggests: what one time and place calls beautiful, another may not.
Dates:
- 1970s Rams writes down his ten principles of good design.
- 2002 Graham argues that taste is not merely subjective.
- 2006 Weinberger asks Graham whether taste is really timeless.
These five pillars are generic judging criteria in the spirit of student app showcases — not any one contest’s official rules, and no affiliation is implied. Contests change their rules every year: read the official current rules before you rely on any checklist. Nothing you judge here leaves your device. Judge a submission →