In this paper we investigate common problems made by novice designers in their virtual environment (VE) designs. Our aim through this study is to alleviate some of the problems encountered by novice designers in their attempts to design and implement their first VEs. The investigation involves the application of usability evaluation techniques as used in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). Some existing guidelines in VE design are used as a basis for the preliminary work. In our work, we rank usability problems according to how serious they are in the design process. Then, based on this ranking we suggest a set of candidate’s criteria for VE design meant specifically for novice designers. The findings from this study highlight the importance of these existing guidelines and the need to modify some of them to suit the requirements of novice designers.