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While our Community Peer Review panel is busy completing their work to select this year’s shortlist, we thought we’d introduce you to the members of our international jury who will select this year’s finalists and winners. Meet Carine Lallemand from Eindhoven, Netherlands.

Carine Lallemand is Assistant Professor in Experience Design at the University of Luxembourg and the Industrial Design Department at the Eindhoven University of Technology (Netherlands). She has a background in Psychology and Human Computer Interaction. Her research activities are mainly focused on experience design and evaluation methods, as well as designerly ways to trigger behavior change. Relying on aesthetics of interaction principles and the use of data as creative material, Carine mentors students to design innovative interactive artifacts. She is the author of a textbook on UX methods, currently used in more than 100 curriculums in 6 French-speaking countries. She is also a passionate advocate for academia-industry relationships.

Carine is no stranger to the IxDA community. She was previously a member of the Program team for Interaction 18.

Linkedin | Twitter

The 2023 Interaction Awards jury is composed of six international representatives led by our jury Chair, Cynthia Savard Saucier. Watch this space as we introduce them individually over the next two weeks.

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You’ve submitted entries from more than 20 countries. We wish you all good luck!

The top three categories for this year’s submissions are Empowering, Engaging, and Disrupting. Entries represent the cross-section of our industry: 26% from Agency/In-house businesses, 16% from Enterprise, 9% from Indie/Non-profit organizations, and 49% from students.

This week our Peer Review process begins. Our Community Review Panel includes 75 IxDA community members. Together this group represents 43 countries. It may be our most global Peer Review Panel yet. While some have been part of previous Peer Review Panels, more than 90% are offering their skills for the first time.

During Peer Review, each submission receives at least two independent reviews. It’s this process that makes the Interaction Awards distinct from other programs: the voice of the global practitioner community is at the foundation of curating the winners.

Our shortlist will be announced on 10 February. Watch this space for news!

Once we have our shortlist, entries move on to the second phase of judging. A diverse and accomplished international jury, led by this year’s chair Cynthia Savard Saucier, selects our Finalists and Winners, along with these special recognition awards — Best Student, Best Concept, Best in Show, and Future Voice. Our People’s Choice Award is selected through public voting from the 2023 Shortlist.

This year’s winners will be revealed on 6 May at an in-person ceremony in New York. The ceremony will also be streamed for our community to watch around the globe.

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Did you miss getting in under the wire yesterday as our Late Entry deadline closed? Well, we have some good news. There is one final sprint to the finish — we’ve extended our deadline through 27 January 2023. So you have just two more weeks to complete your submission.

The entry platform will close and go offline for sure on Friday, 27 January at 11:59 p.m. in San Francisco. You will need to fully complete your submission before we turn off the lights. We understand that these few days can make a world of difference…Go for it, get it done!

This is truly the last call! We would love to have you on board and for your project to have a chance at recognition by the IxDA community. Already there are submissions from more than 19 countries and we want to include yours on that list. Your work deserves consideration.

If there is anything in the submission process keeping you from finishing up, please do not hesitate to let us know at awards@ixda.org.

We are here to help!

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Everyone loves a deadline! Today is the late entry deadline for this year’s Interaction Awards, and we know with our global reach it can be hard to figure out what that means for you in your local time.  So we’ve created this cheat sheet to make sure you don’t miss the cutoff.

Check your submission cutoff:

• San Francisco – 13 January 2023 at 11:59 pm
• New York  – 14 January 2023 at 2:59 am
• London – 14 January 2023 at 7:59 am
• Berlin – 14 January 2023 at 8:59 am
• Johannesburg – 14 January 2023 at 8:59 am  
• Moscow – 14 January 2023 at 9:59 am
• Mumbai – 14 January 2023 at 12:29 pm
• Hong Kong – 14 January 2023 at 2:59 pm
• Tokyo – 14 January at 2023 3:59 pm
• Sydney – 14 January at 2023 4:59 pm

Is your time zone not listed?

Use this handy link to find exactly what Pacific time it is right now based on your local time zone.

Don’t  be the last one to the party

Our submission link works 24 hours a day. We can’t wait to see your work!

Submit

Have any last minutes questions? Check out our Help section for FAQs or ask us something new at awards@ixda.org

Submission is open to all professional and student designers worldwide. Both concept work and/or production work can be submitted for consideration. Find out more at awards.ixda.org/enter

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Our entry deadline is fast approaching and preparing your Awards submission can be an anxiety-inducing experience. Have I got the right information? Did I pick the right photos? Is my story clear?

To make your job easier, we’ve put together insights from our past Interaction Awards jurors – how they’ve looked at submissions and what made a project stand out from the rest.

Jury members want to understand the main points of your project and why it’s worthy of an award. Good storytelling is key. Your submission should be well-written and engaging, with a strong narrative that helps bring your work to life.

Part of what makes a really great piece of interaction design is that it considers how attractive and interesting something is on the surface, but it also considers how robust and clear the systems underneath it are.‍

– Matt Jones, Head of Design, Lunar Energy

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These are the elements that the jury members are asked to consider:

1) Framing

Human context: Demonstrate your process to understand the human context of the problem your project addresses. Identify what people are included, what people are excluded, and the resulting impact. Distinguish between direct users and others impacted. Does your solution improve access, inclusion, and opportunity for historically marginalized people?

Opportunity: Take care to clearly frame the problem space or opportunity. How clear is the insight? How well developed is the connection between insight, solution, and desired outcome? Does the framing offer something new compared to solutions previously attempted in this space?

The videos themselves told very compelling stories and very complete stories. It was clear what the problem was, the methodology for solving the problem, and then what the actual output and outcome was.

– Michelle Berryman, SVP User Experience, Hero Digital

2) Process

Compelling Concept: Is your concept or big idea behind the solution clear? Match and build on your insight and the problem/opportunity. Does the concept advance meaningful discussion or new models for design? Support your claims and demonstrate the impact of your work.

Exquisite Craft: Show how your process translates the concept into a tangible, elegant design solution — through language, style, behavior, and functionality that support human interaction. Demonstrate attention to detail, fit and finish, and how the medium serves your goals. Address how you considered aspects of usability and accessibility. Describe how you considered and incorporated the voices of impacted people in your process.

The ones that have more of a narrow –sort of like a micro-niche type of approach – have been a lot better every single time that we’ve seen something.

– Eddie Opara, Partner, Pentagram

3) Outcomes

Positive Impact: Describe how the solution delivers on the intended impact against the problem/opportunity, the people, and the business (profit, cost, brand). How well does the solution consider and mitigate unintended or negative impacts?

Meaningful Innovation: How novel is the solution, the concept, and/or specific aspects of the craft? Does it advance the practice of interaction design, and inspire new thinking for others?

I want something that is responding to a clear opportunity or a clear need that has a strong vision for itself and for the work it’s doing.

– Dr. Genevieve Bell, Australian National University, Director, School of Cybernetics

Your submission should be relevant to the category you’re submitting for, and it should clearly demonstrate how it meets the criteria outlined above.  Overall, it should be well-crafted, well-written, and persuasive, and demonstrate your work’s value and impact.

A great submission has a satisfying resolution that ties up loose ends and leaves the reader satisfied.

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The Interaction Awards are open for submission through 13 January.

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Community Peer Review is at the core of the Interaction Awards selection process. It is the members of the IxDA community like you that determine who makes our shortlist each year.

Our goal is to curate a representative global panel — experienced designers from around the world — who will review submissions and select the official shortlist. Anyone who self-identifies as a member of the IxDA community can apply to be part of the panel.

This year we opened our Call for Peer Reviewers at the beginning of December and the community answered the call in record numbers. We received 300+ applications from 63 countries. Applicants are educators, design directors, consultants, in-house team members, and agency leaders, reflecting the diversity of the IxDA community. They come from companies that embrace the value of design — IBM, Google, Oracle, SAP, ServiceNow, and Telstra, among many others — as well as IxDA Local Groups and leading design education programs. While some have been part of previous Peer Review Panels, more than 90% are offering their skills for the first time.

From the 300+ submissions, we’ll select approximately 60–75 individuals to form the 2023 Peer Review Panel. Each reviewer will be assigned up to 10 submissions to evaluate during the online review process in early February. Each submission receives at least two independent reviews. It’s this process that makes the Interaction Awards distinct from other programs: the voice of the global practitioner community is at the foundation of curating the winners.

Thank you for donating your time to make the Interaction Awards possible. If you applied to be part of this year’s Review Panel, we’ll let you know by 13 January. Peer Review takes place between 1–8 February 2023.

Your Interaction Awards team

Show us your best work

The Interaction Awards are open for submissions through 13 January. Submission is open to all professional and student designers worldwide. Both concept work and/or production work can be submitted for consideration. Find out more at awards.ixda.org/enter

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We are thrilled to announce that Cynthia Savard Saucier will be leading the judging process as the 2023 Interaction Awards Jury Chair!

Cynthia leads UX at Shopify and is also the author of Tragic Design. She is passionate about the ways in which people communicate and interact, and has dedicated herself to understanding the inner workings of human thought and connection. As a sought-after speaker at design events worldwide, Cynthia brings a unique perspective to the 2023 Interaction Awards Jury. Her expertise and passion make her the perfect choice to lead the jury.

When speaking to Cynthia about this chair nomination, she shared what made this so special to her:

“I’m humbled and honored that you have asked me, as I truly value the work of IxDA. I am always looking for new ways to celebrate and recognize the work of talented designers around the world who are pushing the boundaries of what is possible in this field, and this is the perfect opportunity to do so. I am so excited to see the work this year and I am confident that our jury will have a very difficult time choosing the winners”

Submit your best work

The 2023 Interaction Awards are open for submission through 31 December 2022. Our Late Entry deadline is 13 January 2023.

• Submissions are accepted in the language of your choice
• No video is required for first-round submissions

Shine a light on the excellent design work you’re doing. Winners will be celebrated at the Interaction Awards ceremony in New York on 6 May 2023.

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Peer review is a unique aspect of the Interaction Awards because its members of the IxDA community like you that determine who makes our shortlist each year.

We’re looking for experienced designers from around the world to review submissions with us and select the official shortlist beginning on 1 February 2023. The call is open to anyone who self-identifies as a member of the IxDA community.

If you or your company are planning to submit an entry, you can still participate in the review process — we request that you don’t review your own. During Peer Review, all reviewers are asked to declare any conflicts of interest and we’ll make sure your submissions are reviewed by members of the community not associated with your project.

What do Peer Reviewers do?

Peer Review is an individual, online review process. You’ll be asked to evaluate up to 10 projects. It is approximately an 8–10-hour commitment over a week’s time. Peer Review takes place between 1–8 February 2023.

This process is what makes the Interaction Awards distinct from other awards programs: the voice of the global practitioner community is at the foundation of curating the winners.

Once we have our shortlist, entries move on to the second phase of judging. A diverse and accomplished international jury selects our  Finalists and Winners.

Peer Reviewer Recognition

All Peer Reviewers evaluate up to 10 submissions — it’s your sneak peek into global design trends in interaction design.

We recognize all Peer Reviewers with a digital certificate, and — new this year — you’ll be listed on the new Awards website when it launches. In addition, you’ll receive a VIP invite to our Awards ceremony, taking place in person and online on 6 May 2023.

Join the Peer Review Panel

It’s easy to get involved. Submit your interest by completing this form before 31 December 2022.  

Selected Peer Reviewers will be notified by 13 January.

Thank you for supporting IxDA and the Interaction Awards.

Our Early Bird rate for this year’s Interaction Awards expires at 11:59 pm (PST) today, Monday, 5 December.

IxDA has recognized best-in-class Interaction Design since 2012. The Interaction Awards celebrate examples of excellence across domains, channels, environments, and cultures.

This is your last chance to enter IxDA’s international design awards program at our lowest entry fee this year.

Choose your category:

Tell us about your intentions

Interaction categories? We thought long and hard about how to best categorize our work. Platforms, industries, and domains say very little about what we actually do. We opted for categories that challenge us to think about the intentions of our work and the nature of the interactions we create:

What does it mean to win?

What does it mean to win an Interaction Award? We think our winners say it best — in their own words! Listen to Numan Shakil from Futurice, our 2019 People’s Choice Winner.

Enter today and create your own memorable experience!

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Hello!

Your Interaction Awards team has been busy preparing our next annual Awards cycle, and the Call for Entries is now open.

So, if you, or people you know, are interested in submitting, here’s your cue to gather your best examples of excellence in interaction design from the past two years. For inspiration, check out last year’s winning projects, and our 2022 Chairs’ reflections on the 2022 entries.

Enter now for the best rate — Early Bird fees are valid through 21 November!

Why should I enter?

Winning an interaction Award is a memorable experience! Adrian Westaway from Special Projects, our 2019 Best Concept winner, sums it up.

Get involved

And if you’re interested in supporting the Awards this year, here are a few ways you can help:

Call for volunteers: Two of our goals for 2023 are to increase the global reach of the Awards program and expand the diversity of submissions from outside Europe and North America. If you’re interested in joining our communications and marketing efforts, get in touch.

Call for content: The Interaction Awards exist to showcase excellence in Interaction Design. If you’re interested in writing about the state of our practice for the Awards Medium publication, send us a short paragraph about what you’d like to write and we’ll share it with our content editors.

Help us make this year’s Interaction Awards even better than last year. More details to come when we launch the new version of awards.ixda.org, later this month!

Enter your work and help us spread the word!

Cheers,
Interaction Awards Team

On 27 April 2022, IxDA celebrated winning projects from all over the world presented via live stream. From a shortlist of 68 projects, 11 Awards were presented, recognizing work that ranged from enterprise-level solutions to student-developed concepts.  This year’s co-chairs, Kadambari Sahu and Sreyan Ghosh, opened the Awards ceremony with a reflection on the work submitted and the state of our practice.

2022 Winners

Best in Category: Connecting

Open Door Museum

Carnegie Mellon University, USA

Open Door Museum is a modern cabinet of curiosities, where everyone can be a curator to define our collective identity.

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Best in Category: Disrupting

Philips Pediatric Coaching

Philips Experience Design, Netherlands

Philips Pediatric Coaching is a holistic coaching solution to prepare and guide children (age 4 to 8) for an MRI scan. It consists of a gamified mobile app to prepare children at home; an educational toy scanner to prepare kids in the waiting room; and guidance in the bore of the MRI scanner.

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Best in Category: Empowering

UMA: Every Pregnant Woman’s Friend

IBM India Private Limited, India

In semi-developed and rural areas where infrastructure, lack of information, and restrictive notion of culture adversely impact pregnancy journeys and delivery outcomes, UMA is a pregnancy service that aims to empower pregnant persons and their ancillary support system.

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Best in Category: Engaging

SHIFT – An alternate future for experiencing reality in digital imagery

Umeå Institute of Design, Sweden

SHIFT is an image probing tool that enables a new methodology of exploring multiple perspectives of a context. When multiple images are taken of the same context, they build a rich collection of diverse perspectives. Shift connects these images and uses any image as a visual search tool to uncover alternate perspectives from the same scene.

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Best in Category: Expressing

Color Tone – a colorfully tactile way to experience sound

Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design, Great Britain

Color Tone is a set of tools, for people who are deaf or hard of hearing in Costa Rica, to experience the physicality of sound. It allows them to access sound and the information it contains by experiencing it through sight and touch. They can also use it with hearing people and share their experiences and feelings.

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Best in Category: Optimizing

Grin, remote orthodontist platform

NewDealDesign LLC, USA

Grin is a comprehensive digital/physical orthodontic platform that provides remote monitoring solutions to bring patients the convenience and responsible care they’ve come to expect while keeping licensed, local orthodontists at the center of their treatment.

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Future Voice

Climate Designers

Since 2019 Climate Designers has been steadily building a hub and community that encourages and empowers designers to become climate literate and leaders in their work.The team has built a community that fosters meaningful connections between designers, empowers them to bring conversations about climate into their work, and helps them shape a path to working in a more dedicated way on the challenges posed by the climate crisis.

People’s Choice

UMA: Every Pregnant Woman’s Friend

IBM India Private Limited, India

What’s popular isn’t always good. And what’s good isn’t always popular. But we trust the IxDA community to share your opinion and choose the People’s Choice Award! Giving a voice to and including our community is what makes the Interaction Awards unique.

Best Student

Color Tone – a colorfully tactile way to experience sound

Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design, Great Britain

One of the most important things we can do is teach and mentor the next generation because that’s how we increase the reach and impact of our profession. Students help make all of us more reflective practitioners. They remind us to question our assumptions and habits.

Best Concept

Color Tone – a colorfully tactile way to experience sound

Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design, Great Britain‍

Concepts give form to ideas. They foster conversation, inform decisions and help us choose paths. We create concepts to explore what is possible now or show what could become possible in the future.

Best in Show

UMA: Every Pregnant Woman’s Friend

IBM India Private Limited, India‍

The very concept of what interaction design IS is complex and it exists across different technological, social, and cultural contexts. A multiple category winner — in Empowering and as People's Choice — this project connected with the jury and the community.  

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Watch the 2022 Interaction Awards ceremony on YouTube.

The big day is almost here!

At the beginning of the 2022 Interaction Awards cycle, we set our intentions to:

• promote accessible and inclusive design
• celebrate design stories, and
• increase community outreach

Good design is so much more than a solution, it always tells great stories that are responsible, ethical, and thought-provoking. IxDA helps in bringing good designs into the spotlight and serves as an example of projects pushing the envelope by challenging the status quo and thereby advancing the discipline.We invite you to celebrate with us on Wednesday, 27 April, as we recognize 11 projects during our 11th annual Interaction Awards ceremony.

‍Our show starts at 9:00 am PST | noon EST | 6:00 pm CET

IxDA’s Interaction Awards are all about celebrating excellence in design across the world. While most of the Award winners are selected by our international jury, there is a single opportunity for you – the IxDA community – to select the People’s Choice Award.The People’s Choice Award reflects the voice of the IxDA community. Voting is open through the 26 April! Submit your vote for your favorite shortlisted project this year. The project with the most votes wins and will be announced along with other winners during our live-streamed Awards ceremony on 27 April.‍

How to Vote

‍It’s simple and only takes a few minutes.

1. Review the shortlisted projects.
2. Find the project of your choice.
3. Vote! Click on the ‘Vote’ button in the top left.
4. Share with friends, family, and colleagues! The more votes you get, the better your chances.

Voting Rules

1. All shortlisted projects are eligible for People’s Choice (not just finalists).
2. You may only vote once.
3. Voting officially ends on 11:59 pm (Pacific Standard Time) on 26 April.

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Make your voice heard and vote today!

Every year the Interaction Awards Co-Chairs choose the Jury Chair. The Jury Chair is one of the most vital roles for the Interaction Awards to fill each year – helping curate and lead the jury, while ensuring the very best work is recognized. This person also takes on the responsibility of accounting for diversity, and responding to submissions ethically in a way that reflects the global community.After much deliberation and many well-qualified candidates, this year’s Co-Chairs, Kadambari Sahu and Sreyan Ghosh, are thrilled to announce that Gabriel White will be leading the judging process as the 2022 Interaction Awards Jury Chair!

Gabriel is the founder and principal consultant at Small Surfaces, an international human-centred design consultancy focused on social impact projects in developing countries. Gabriel works on projects that seek to improve education, healthcare and access to financial services for low-income people across Africa, Asia and the Pacific. He also has a degree in Philosophy.In their words,

"It’s a real honor to chair this year’s jury. It’s important to me that the work of this year’s jury recognises excellence in design both as a craft, as well as an agent of change. Great design succeeds in addressing both these basic dimensions.

In that context, I’ve brought together a jury that represents design as truly global practice. I hope that the jury members’ diverse perspectives and experiences will bring a unique viewpoint on what it means to achieve excellence in design today."

Congratulations to all!

After several weeks of intense reviewing by our talented and hardworking peer reviewers, we’re excited to announce the shortlist for the 2022 Interaction Awards! Everyone who submitted projects contributed to the incredibly diverse body of work featured in our shortlist. Even if you didn’t make it this year, we value tremendously the work you put into your submissions. Our awards and our industry don’t exist without your ambition and dedication to the work we all do.

In our shortlist, you’ll see student concepts alongside professional work from around the world. Domains covered by our shortlist members include education, political discourse, health, creative arts, government, branding & marketing, social science, and music, to name a few. And most importantly, the audience that these projects aim to help and empower range from the young to old, from the social to the introverted, from the comfortable to those who need comforting.

We couldn’t be prouder to show off the incredible design talent setting their sights to take on the world’s problems.

Without further delay, here is our shortlist for the 2022 Interaction Awards!

Deep gratitude to our community volunteers

‍One of the many things that makes the Interaction Awards so special is the involvement of the community volunteers who help prepare a shortlist for the jury via intense peer review. Our gratitude also goes to the IxDA members who contributed their valuable time and stewardship to the peer review process.

Dear global IxDA community,

Peer review is the most important process in the annual IxDAwards because it’s designers like you that determines who make the shortlist every year. We’re looking for a small band of experienced designers from around the world to review the hundreds of submissions with us and select the official shortlist beginning on 1 February 2022. This process is open to all IxDA members.

Even if you or your company has submitted an entry, you’re still qualified to judge other entries. We’ll just request that you don’t review your own.

What do Peer Reviewers do?

Peer Reviewers participate in a private online review process to select the 2022 shortlist for approximately a 8–10-hour commitment over a week’s time. The process will begin around 1-6 February 2022.

Afterwards, shortlisted entries are then evaluated by a diverse and accomplished international jury who will select Finalists and Winners. This process is what makes the Interaction Awards distinct from other awards programs: the voice of the global practitioner community is at the foundation of curating the winners.

Your commitment and perks as a Peer Reviewer:

• Review at least 10 submissions that are submitted for the awards this year
• Sneak peak into global design trends around the world

Get Involved

Join us by filling out the form below. It takes 30 seconds.

📝 Sign up here

📨 Watch your inbox around 7 February 2022 for more details

Your time to shine – Award Submission Deadline is 31 January 2022!

As you may have read from our vision, one of the biggest goals for Interaction Awards this year is to increase community outreach while promoting accessible and inclusive design. We want to encourage participation from all over the world, across every level of experience. To do this, we lowered the barrier to enter your projects. Entrants may submit their work in any language and videos with your submissions are optional. Every year, the IxDA community celebrates the winners of the Interaction Awards. As “the Oscars” of the Interaction Design industry, the Interaction Award is so prestigious that even to be a finalist bestows credibility to the designers, school, or company involved. They are, by the simple virtue of their selection, deemed to be the best.

Your work deserves consideration.

Winning the Interaction Award helps YOU stand out.As each designer and entity (school, agency, or organization) strives to stand out in an increasingly competitive and changing market, winning the Interaction Award sets you apart from competitors and differentiates the quality of your achievements from others.You might be working on an important, beautifully designed “thing” right now but no one will ever know that it’s best-in-class unless you have the courage to submit your work for an award.

“Winning the Interaction Award has helped us underline our experience and expertise in an increasingly challenging marketplace, it has also helped us win clients from around the world. Our award for Moot helped us engage with the Irish government to design gov.ie, a major piece of state infrastructure and channel for delivery of govt services in Ireland.”– Frank Long, Co-Owner & Director at Frontend.com Winner 2018 – Moot – Make democracy great again

“Winning the IxDA award helped me make KonneKt reality and bring it to over 220 hospitals in 18 countries.”– Job Jansweijer, User Experience Specialist at Valsplat Winner 2014 – KonneKt: a social game for isolated children in the hospital

Let everyone celebrate your design story

As you may have read from our vision, one of the biggest goals for Interaction Awards this year is to increase community outreach while promoting accessible and inclusive design. We want to encourage participation from all over the world, across every level of experience. To do this, we lowered the barrier to enter your projects. Entrants may submit their work in any language and videos with your submissions are optional. This is also why fees are structured by professional or student status and geographic region. Read more about the Interaction Awards categories, rules, and prizes.

We accept submissions in the following six categories:

• Optimizing :: Making daily activities more efficient
• Engaging :: Capturing attention, creating delight and delivering meaning
• Empowering :: Enabling people to g beyond their limits
• Expressing :: Encouraging self-expression and/or creativity
• Connecting :: Facilitating communication between people and communities
• Disrupting :: Re-imagining completely an existing product or service

All entries are judged in two rounds. The first round is a peer-review, which is open to all IxDA members who wish to participate. Shortlisted entries will then enter a second round, which will be closely evaluated by our 2022 Interaction Awards jury.

As the world heals from the pandemic, positivity shines through to build back better. The pandemic exposed various problems, vulnerabilities, and newer approaches towards a multitude of things: from redefining the workplace to finding innovative solutions for the healthcare industry to understanding systemic issues and social problems. The pandemic became a forcing factor—bringing out design solutions to some of the wicked problems of Reour times. People came together to find solutions where avenues had to be created. Beyond this, inequality and cultural influences had to be tackled to keep the pandemic in check. To build back better we need better approaches, systems, policies, and processes that are inclusive, green, and respectful of all life forms.The Interaction Awards play a major role to bring forward the best of the best and serve as a platform to showcase innovative design stories. This year while the Award presentation will continue to be virtual, the vision is to be accessible, inclusive, and spread stories of design triumph spanning cultures and geographies that celebrate the diversity of interaction design.

This year we want to focus on the following:

‍Promote Accessible and Inclusive Design

We truly want to amplify the voice of designs that are accessible and inclusive for all. Being able to give voice to the marginalized and address the needs and desires of human aspirations bring forth the strength of good design that helps construct better futures for everyone.

‍Celebrate Design Stories

IxDA should be looked at as a platform that celebrates stories. Good design is so much more than a solution, it always tells great stories that are responsible, ethical, and thought-provoking. IxDA helps in bringing good designs into the spotlight and serves as an example of projects pushing the envelope by challenging the status quo and thereby advancing the discipline.

‍Increase Community Outreach

The biggest strength of IxDA lies in its community. And we want to leverage these connections to encourage more people to apply this year than ever before. As we continue to spread awareness, we want to hear diverse perspectives from different ethnicities and geographies that address challenges that are localized and unique.

‍Call for Volunteers

We, Kadambari and Sreyan, are co-chairing this year’s Awards to bring this vision to reality. We would love to have your support and we invite you all to participate in the Awards and volunteer with us to make the Interaction Awards a success.

‍Please register your interest to volunteer with us.

Kadambari Sahu,

SVP Design, ValueLabs

‍Kadambari Sahu is an award-winning Designer and a Design Leader, working as SVP design at ValueLabs. She founded the User Experience Group at ValueLabs, and is currently leading 50+ designers to create world-class and award-winning products and services to have a positive impact on businesses. Her forte lies in building, growing, coaching, and mentoring high-performance design teams from scratch. She creates a design culture by infusing design thinking within organizations and businesses to create a holistic strategy and customer experience. Her practice in design allows her to work on intangible and tangible aspects of design; breaking the boundaries between physical, digital, and service design and creating a seamless experience across media, devices, touch-points, cultures, and geographies. She has worked for clients across geographies spanning North America, Europe, Australia, and Asia. She has won 120+  awards for her work and leadership including Interaction 20, Red Dot awards, German Design, Stevie Female Executive of the year -Bronze, Women Leadership of the year -Titan awards, and many others. She has also been part of many international Design and Business Awards, Juries, and Fellowships.You can know more about her work here https://kadleadership.com/

Sreyan Ghosh,

Interaction Designer at Google

‍Sreyan started his career as an Interaction Designer at Google after graduating from National Institute of Design, India. He has led features for several large scale products including Google Pay for India (Tez), GSuite and, most recently, YouTube. At YouTube, he focuses on designing for the identity and expression of the 2 billion people who frequent the platform every month. A strong advocate for research-driven design that helps identify diverse user needs while striving for global equity and inclusion, Sreyan’s work has been published by the MIT press and won the 2017 Interaction Awards Best Concept. Outside of work, his interests include exploring intersections within digital and tangible interactions, mentoring designers through non-profit organizations, eating great food, and trying to run it off. You can see some of his work at https://sreyan.com.

Deep love and gratitude

As we said in our first blog post, co-chairing the Awards is, and has been, a labor of love for both of us for the last year. We wrap up the year now, humbled, optimistic, enthusiastic, and extremely grateful.

We are so grateful for...

… our dedicated 25 Awards team volunteers, 60 Peer Reviewers, ceremony hosts and presenters, and everyone who gave time and effort to make the 2021 Awards program a stupendous success.… our Jury Chair May-Li Khoe and the amazing Jury she curated Catt Small, Andrés Burbano, Dara Oke, Una Lee, Ari Melenciano, and Andrea Mignoloand. This group took on the very tough job of judging and selecting the finalists and winners.… our exclusive sponsor, Amazon Design whose generosity supported the entire Awards year including the first ever globally live-streamed Awards ceremony.… Brenda Sanderson, our IxDA Executive Director, who we have now named “Encylopedia Brendica”. Without her guidance, knowledge, and assistance, we would have been lost.… and every one of you who submitted work for consideration. Your work is what pushes our craft to evolve, and we can’t do any of this without you

A new high for the Awards

This incredible community made the 2021 Interaction Awards cycle a year of firsts and high benchmarks. We launched a new podcast, Distinguished Design, to provide space for deeper conversations with the winners about their process, the work, and the impact the work is having on the people for whom it’s designed. We updated the submission fee structure to be more inclusive and equitable for indie design studios and non-profits. We offered submission content in multiple languages and accepted submissions in ANY language. We removed video requirements as well so that more teams could enter their work.Thanks to the team's intensified efforts towards better diversity, inclusion, equity, and belonging, this year marks the highest number of submissions ever for the Awards: 351 submissions from 39 different countries - some of which participated in the Awards for the very first time - with 13 countries represented in the final winners circle!

Diversity Survey

And we want to go further. We understand that diversity isn’t just about skin color or nationality. We want to ensure that the best work in the world is recognized no matter where it comes from or who created it. With that in mind, we want to better understand our current state of diversity, inclusion, equity, and belonging. That’s why we’ve sent out a survey to all 351 of the 2021 Awards entrants, and plan to publish the results. The goal is to give the IxDA board and the 2022 co-chairs data on what diversity is already present amongst submitters, to address the question of what diversity means for our community, and shed light on areas to improve.

The 2022 Awards cycle is about to begin

The new Awards Co-Chairs have been selected! We can’t wait for you to hear from this powerhouse duo and for them to share their vision with you. We are confident that they will make the next year’s Awards program even better!

Check back here soon to discover who the 2022 Awards co-chairs will be!