dwi atmoko A.
Good concept - but the competition system needs serious improvement to be genuinely fair
Good concept, but the competition system needs serious improvement I have been using this platform for years, and unfortunately the experience today is very different from what I remember. The problem is not simply the platform itself, but the lack of enforcement toward Owners and Participants who do not follow the spirit of a design competition. 1. Rules are not enforced consistently. Owners are not supposed to request, review, judge, or assist individual submissions publicly, yet this still happens even after they are reminded of the rules. The platform needs to enforce these rules for owners and participants, not just publish them. 2. Owners can demand a lot for very little prize money. A prize of around US$1,500 is divided between three winners (60.30.10), with additional platform and payment deductions. Yet Owners can request an extensive amount of preliminary design work. The workload and compensation often feel completely disproportionate. Many Owners gave prize less than that. 3. Requirements for second and third place can be excessive. Requesting complete files, dimensions, and detailed deliverables from multiple winners is questionable. If an Owner wants to continue with a second- or third-place design, they should simply pay for additional work. Actually, the platform has this rule, but not noticeable. 4. Owners need clearer rules about post-competition work. Winning a competition does not mean the designer must continue working for free. Additional work should be treated as a new professional engagement and paid accordingly. 5. Competition presentation rules have become inconsistent. The original rules required clean covers without text, but now many submissions use prominent titles and attention-grabbing text. If the rules change, they should be applied consistently to everyone. 6. AI is changing the competition in a problematic way. The competition is increasingly becoming about who can produce the most impressive AI-generated image rather than who can create the best actual design. AI-generated visuals can also ignore real dimensions and architectural constraints. This needs much clearer regulation. 7. The biggest problem: Owner accountability. I have experienced a competition where the Owner took almost a year to select a winner (until now). Participants are given strict deadlines, so Owners should also have a strict deadline. If an Owner fails to select a winner, the platform should have a clear intervention process. Participants should not be left waiting indefinitely after investing significant time and effort. 8. Customer support is much weaker than it used to be. What disappoints me most is the lack of response to emails. Around five years ago, the administration/support team was much more responsive, which gave Participants confidence that someone was actually looking after the competition. I recently came across a public post from an Owner who explained that they had contacted the platform by phone and email during a previous competition, asking how they could communicate with participants about their designs and provide feedback (that the platform's rules prohibit this practice in a competition) through an acceptable channel. They received no reply. They contacted the platform again during the next competition, but still received no response. As a result, the Owner felt they had no choice but to ask the participant's number for feedback on the public Wall, despite knowing that the platform's rules prohibit this practice in a competition. The Owner even shared an email address publicly in an attempt to establish communication with participants which is very not fair for the competition. 9. Voting is not necessarily fair either. Family or team voting may not reflect the Owner's actual preferences or the discussions that happened during the competition. Open voting can be even worse when people give participants extremely low scores. Bottom line: The platform has a good concept and can provide valuable opportunities for designers. But the competition system needs much stronger rules, consistent enforcement, Owner accountability, better support, and clearer AI/voting policies. Right now, too much responsibility is placed on Participants while Owners are sometimes allowed to ignore deadlines and rules. Good platform concept - but the competition system needs serious improvement to be genuinely fair