You may have a different assessment of the candidate's potential value as an intern. The parent clearly stated "Here's feedback as to why I'm not sending this website to my studio lead to schedule a phone screen with the designer".
Making assumptions about the parents intent provides no value to the discussion.
The former adds nothing to the conversation and is pretty close to being a personal attack, the latter provides feedback and (may) prompt constructive debate about how to provide critique.
Just a list of things that are "wrong," according to the poster.
Parent comment supplied criticism – I'm not arguing that. But s/he did not at all help to reveal a path towards a better outcome. That's what would make it constructive.
Sure, but perhaps I'd be more surprised if that internship had to do with UX/interaction design. Maybe marketing, or webdesign.
If I were to make a drawing of a house, even a detailed rendering, and made a website about why I would like such a house, why it would be a nice house, that wouldn't make me an architect.
Your point about the larger portfolio is an important one. Where is it? At 21 he must have been studying this field for 2 maybe 3 years?
The site does look very neat and well-polished. That is impressive, no matter what. Clear indicator of talent. Whether that talent is UX design (people keep talking about "design" in this thread, as if it's some general thing), he does not demonstrate: no tests, no design documents, no research. Except he does claim to have focused on research, yet no word about what this research entails, the process, how it went, what he found out.
So I'm going to say, he's got great talent, for marketing shiny things to the general public. And if you think about it, it makes a lot more sense that someone great at marketing reaches the top of HN, than someone great at UX design? ;-)
The concept and presentation of it are definitely impressive, especially for someone who's only 21 and still looking for internship-level work. He's easily in the top 5%, probably top 1% of designers, in terms of being able to see a complicated concept through from ideation to execution.
#1 — There's nothing wrong with using assets from other companies like Amazon, Facebook, Wikipedia, etc. in a concept mockup. If anything, it's nice to see realistic assets being used instead of stock junk that won't actually work in real-world situations.
#2 — Yup, the 6-finger-pinch would probably be too convoluted, I agree. But that's easily replaced with a regular pinch. Easy to get little details like this wrong in the scheme of things, especially for the more minor gestures.
#3 — Who cares? If anything this shows that he knows about what's out there in terms of prior art, and is able to build on it in an inspiring way. That's a good sign in my book, not a deal breaker.
#4 — The fact that he was able to put together this page, with all of the marketing copy, and the well-design screenshots (with zooming), etc. already shows that for a visual and interaction designer he's way ahead of the curve in terms of marketing.
I'm not saying the concept is perfect, but it's definitely well presented, and well thought out. Add in the fact that the designer is 21 and looking for an internship, and he is an absolutely obvious candidate for a phone screen. I'd be surprised if he isn't able to land internships with any of the big tech companies (Apple, Google, Facebook, etc.) with this piece as part of a larger portfolio. He's clearly good at coming up with, polishing, and communicating ideas.