IxDAwards
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We’re honored, delighted, and proud to announce this year’s winners representing excellence in interaction design.

The fifth annual Interaction Awards ceremony was held last night at the Apollo theater in Helsinki, Finland as part of the Interaction16 conference closing party where finalists and winners were honored on stage.

BEST IN SHOW
Wayfindr – Independent travel for blind people by ustwo (Professional, United Kingdom)
project details

BEST CONCEPT
Sensel Morph by frog design (Professional, United States)
project details

BEST STUDENT
ANNA – breathing assistant by Umeå Institute of Design (Student, Sweden)
project details

PEOPLE’S CHOICE AWARD
Shortlisted project receiving the most online votes from the public 4 January – 3 March
NailSnaps by NailSnaps (Professional, United States)
project details

CONNECTING – Best in Category
Facilitating communication between people and communities
Edward M. Kennedy Institute by Intersection (Professional, United States)
project details

DISRUPTING – Best in Category
Re-imagining completely an existing product or service by creating new behaviors, usages or markets
Sensel Morph by frog (Professional, United States)
project details

EMPOWERING – Best in Category
Enabling people to go beyond their limits
Wayfindr – Independent travel for blind people by ustwo (Professional, United Kingdom)
project details

ENGAGING – Best in Category
Capturing attention, creating delight and delivering meaning
ANNA – breathing assistant by Umeå Institute of Design (Student, Sweden)
project details

EXPRESSING – Best in Category
Encouraging self expression and/or creativity
SquareTalk by Queensland University of Technology (Student, Australia)
project details

OPTIMIZING – Best in Category
Making daily activities more efficient
Kurbo by Cooper (Professional, United States)
project details

The 2016 Future Voice Award recipient, selected by Jury Chair Kim Goodwin, is the Government Digital Service (GDS) of the United Kingdom. GDS is honored for its exemplary culture change through design. Through openly communicating and sharing about their work, they provide an inspiring model for the U.S., Australia, and others.

On behalf of IxDA and the entire 2016 Interaction Awards team, we want to thank everyone who made this year’s Interaction Awards truly special. Particularly all you who entered the competition, jury chair and thought partner Kim Goodwin, the six wonderful jurors who gathered with us in New York City, our gracious jury weekend host Liz Danzico and the SVA MFA Interaction Design program, and all of the many IxDA volunteers who make our programs possible.

Congratulations to this year’s winners!

This is your chance to evaluate, celebrate and vote for the project you believe represents the best of the best in interaction design from among this year’s shortlisted entries — and we can’t wait to see what you choose.

How it works

It’s simple. Review the shortlisted projects. Find the project you think represents best-in-class interaction design. On each project’s detail page, you’ll find a “Vote” button that will enable you to Tweet your vote. You may vote once for each project you wish to support. Retweets are nice but only original tweets will be counted, and only one vote per project for each Twitter account is allowed.

The shortlisted project with the most votes as of midnight (Helsinki time) on Thursday, 3 March will win! The recipient of the People’s Choice Award will be announced along with other winners at the Interaction Awards ceremony on Friday evening, 4 March.

Don’t wait. Cast your vote now! Anything can happen, any project can win. It’s up to you!

Spread the word and promote your favorite projects before voting closes on Thursday night, 3 March 3rd at midnight in Helsinki. We’re looking forward to seeing what work you find most inspiring. Compare your choices with the final results: Join us at Interaction16 — tickets are going fast! — or watch here for our 2016 Winners blog post and website update, coming out shortly after the ceremony.

Congratulations to the 2016 Interaction Awards finalists, all of whom will be celebrated in March during Interaction16 in Helsinki, Finland.

Who will win Best in Category in each of the six categories? Which work will be recognized as Best Student Project? Best Concept? Best in Show? Who will our jury chair honor with the 2016 Future Voice Award? Details will be revealed on Friday evening, March 4, 2016 at the Interaction Awards ceremony. See you there!

Connecting‍

Facilitating communication between people and communities

Trafficbridge
Cooper, Professional, United States

SAP Tennis Analytics for Coaches
SAP, Professional, United States

Edward M. Kennedy Institute
Intersection, Professional, United States

Who, Like Me, is Threatened?
Second Story, part of SapientNitro, Professional, United States

Disrupting‍

Re-imagining completely an existing product or service by creating new behaviors, usages or markets

reForm
MIT Media Lab / Tangible Media Group, Student, United States

The New Eurosport Player: Putting the live sports viewing experience first
Work & Co, Professional, United States

Wayfindr – Independent travel for blind people
ustwo, Professional, United Kingdom

Sensel Morph
frog, Professional, United States

Empowering‍

Enabling people to go beyond their limits

Kurbo
Cooper, Professional, United States

Owlet
R/GA + Owlet Baby Care, Professional, United States

SAM by SAM Labs
SAM Labs, Professional, United Kingdom

Wayfindr – Independent travel for blind people
ustwo, Professional, United Kingdom

Engaging‍

Capturing attention, creating delight and delivering meaning

SMART
Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design, Student, Denmark

The Color Visualizer
Tellart, Professional, United States

The Pursuit by Equinox
R/GA, Professional, United States

ANNA – breathing assistant
Umeå Institute of Design, Student, Sweden

The Imagination Machine
Tellart, Professional, Netherlands

Expressing‍

Encouraging self expression and/or creativity

Sound Blocks
Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design, Student, Denmark

Trashtag
Second Story (part of SapientNitro), Professional, United States

NailSnaps – Turn your photos into custom nail art
NailSnaps, Professional, United States

SquareTalk
Queensland University of Technology, Student, Australia

Step
SUPSI, Student, Switzerland

Optimizing‍

Making daily activities more efficient

Arlanda Departure Sequencing Tool
Veryday, Professional, Sweden

Basen
Itera Norge AS, Professional, Norway

Adobe Fill & Sign
Adobe, Professional, United States

Kurbo
Cooper, Professional, United States

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Up next:

People’s Choice voting will open early January 2016: All shortlisted projects are eligible. Stay tuned for details!

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The 2016 jury’s work is done! What a privilege it has been to work with such an exceptional group of people and to review such a phenomenal range of entries.

The jury convened in New York City from 13-15 November. Interaction Awards co-chairs MJ Broadbent and Thomas Kueber did a masterful job preplanning the weekend. Our grateful thanks to host Liz Danzico and students of the SVA MFA Interaction Design program.

On Saturday, the six jurors met in pairs to discuss the category shortlists. Their job was to evaluate how well each entry exemplified the category definition and met the evaluation criteria: How well did the team understand the audience and opportunity? How did they go about it? How well crafted was the final solution? What was its impact? Each pair of jurors proposed finalists and a winner in each category. The jury as a whole then reviewed these proposals, made some adjustments, and agreed on the final disposition of the awards. My role as jury chair was to assist during small group evaluations and then facilitate the larger conversation. Discussions were extended and vigorous at times, but they were always thoughtful and collegial. As juror Sudhir Sharma observed, everyone was open to “listen to a point of view and change their own.” A primary focus throughout was questioning whether interaction design was core to the entry.

Jurors appreciated the diversity of the shortlisted entries, which tackled everything from daily inconveniences to major life challenges. Quite a few entries offered excellent storytelling—not to be confused with video production quality—which enhances their value as exemplars for the community. We struggled to assess some of the entries because they didn’t really address one or more of the evaluation criteria. Some entry videos showed people talking about the design, but spent very little time on the design itself. When entries used only static images or narrative description, the jury was less able to assess the interaction design because structure and flow matter.

In the end, the jury recognized a broad range of projects across the six categories. Some push the boundaries of interaction design in interesting ways: for example, emphasizing interactions that are purely hardware or voice entry. Several finalists exemplify design as a force for positive change. Other finalist entries addressed relatively small, mundane problems with skill and grace. The jury agreed that these entries nailed some of the fundamentals at the core of our craft. Even small problems are worthy of our best efforts. The jurors are also delighted that you will see student projects holding their own among the professional entries. We felt the category winners best exemplified what each category is about; however, every finalist entry is strong work and worthy of recognition.

Thanks to the jurors and co-chairs for all their efforts, to the IxDA community for all the work that went into peer review and, most of all, thanks to everyone who put their work out there. The community benefits from seeing the range, diversity and thoughtfulness evident in interaction design today.

Stay tuned: the 2016 finalists will be announced shortly!

We’re thrilled to announce the 68 projects representing 17 countries that have been named for inclusion in the 2016 Interaction Awards Shortlist. Of special interest: 36% of the recognized projects are student works from 11 countries around the world. Congratulations to all!

View the shortlisted projects in detail by category.

We’d like to thank everyone who submitted their work and shared their stories with us. We’re truly inspired by the overall quality and level of excellence seen throughout all submissions. Whether shortlisted or not, all entrants are warmly encouraged to make their great work the focus of talks, case studies or presentations at IxDA local groups and in classrooms around the world.

All shortlisted projects are eligible for the People’s Choice Award, online voting for which will open shortly. Ultimately, the winner of the coveted People’s Choice Award will be recognized during the Awards ceremony at Interaction16 in Helsinki, Finland.

Our gratitude also goes to the IxDA members who contributed their valuable time and stewardship to the peer review process. The selection of shortlisted projects is strongly based in this peer review: the practitioner community evaluates entries using established criteria.

The practice and influence of interaction design continues to scale at an amazing pace. IxDA and its programs — particularly the Interaction Awards — enable all who are interested to see this progression and to benefit from it. As 2016 Jury Chair Kim Goodwin recently stated, “Everyone who looks at the entries will walk away with a broader understanding of what interaction design is and how designers can improve peoples’ lives.”

What’s next? Our esteemed 2016 jury meets in New York City this coming weekend, November 13-15, to argue and select the finalists and winners. Special thanks to School of Visual Arts, MFA in Interaction Design, for hosting the jury weekend. Finalists will be announced just as soon as possible, with all winners announced on stage in Helsinki. We hope to see you there!

MJ & Thomas
And the fabulous 2016 Interaction Awards Committee (see who we are just below the 2016 Jury)

And we’re getting ready for the peer reviewing process.

The submission period for the 2016 Interaction Awards is over. Finished. Done. We are wiping the tables, putting away the chairs and switching out the light…

No, not really! First of all we want to shout out a big big thank you and give a round of applause to everyone who helped get us here: the awards team, IxDA leaders, our wonderful jury and, last but not least, YOU.

Thank you for the wonderful flood of entries from all over the world. Thanks for inspiring student submissions with amazing ideas, thanks for the big and small projects you entered and thanks for all the passion and hard work we can see throughout all your entries so far. Thank you. You have contributed to a body of contemporary work that, over time, helps IxDA “write the history” of interaction design.

What’s next? Now comes the hard work for our IxDA community of peer reviewers to narrow down a massive number of entries to a short list of ten to twelve per category. 

There are many things that make the Interaction Awards unique and one of them is our jury process — a process that begins with you and your expertise. You, the practitioner, are the voice of the IxDA community and we invite you to join us in selecting the best examples of interaction design excellence.

The peer review process is simple. Now that the call for entries has closed, each entry will be evaluated against established criteria by multiple reviewers. As a peer reviewer, we will ask you to log in and review a small subset of entries. You ratings and comments contribute to defining the short list. You can review as few or as many entries as you like. And yes, you can participate if you or your company submitted entries this year. The review process will allow you to bypass ‘conflict of interest’ entries, if they happen to arise.

Wait no more, sign up to be a peer reviewer:

https://goo.gl/BCqxVF

After that is done, our Jury will meet in New York to discuss, fight, shout, argue and finally choose the finalists and winners to join us on stage during Interaction 16 in Helsinki.

Stay with us…like we said, this is not a private party. We will blog and photograph and film along the way to Helsinki — our journey always to be found on awards.ixda.org.

Thank you for making the 2016 Interaction Awards that awesome — through the astonishing projects you submitted and your thoughtful peer reviews.

Cheers and we’ll see you in Finland!
Thomas & MJ

…or; 3 do’s and 1 don’t from a former Awards addict.

Last November, as we were looking through hundreds of Awards submissions, former Interaction Awards Co-chair, Janna DeVylder and myself found ourselves discussing the «recipe» for entering a design competition like the IxDA Awards.

1. Do read the evaluation criteria‍

The criteria are there to guide the jury through a rigorous selection process and you do yourself and your project a great favor by responding to these four questions. What opportunity was the project addressing? Who were you designing for? What was the impact? What was the project’s design process? Looking at each and every project with these lenses enables the jury to judge a great variation of work based on a unified set of criteria, ultimately selecting the exemplars of Interaction Design today.

2. Do think about your category

‍It’s heart-wrenching to watch fantastic projects being faulted in the peer-review and jury process because they reside in the wrong category. The Interaction Awards categories are specially designed to cover all types of work without having to resort to the infamous «open» category.
A good written rationale for why you belive your project is an exemplar within the chosen category is a surefire hit with jury and will put you on the path to eternal glory in the gilded halls of the IxDA.
(Ps. You can enter your project in multiple categories if you want)

3. Don’t let the video-piece scare you (alt. Don’t overthink it)‍

Don’t for a minute think that pulling out all your fx skills will impress the judges. In fact, if your piece is all style and no substance I can almost guarantee that the jury will quickly move on to the next project. Your project is unique, your story is unique – share it with your peers!
There is a multitude of free (or nearly free) software for your computer, tablet or smartphone that will deliver great quality video. Pick your weapon of choice and get going! (Pro tip: Respect the 4 minute limit)

4. Do Enjoy it!‍

As professionals we tend to move on quickly to the next project or feature with little or no time to reflect on the (sometimes) epic undertaking you have been part of. Preparing your project for competition entry is an excellent retrospective exercise for you and your team. If all goes to plan, you’ll be standing on stage in Finlandia Hall next march, basking in the glory of your peers. If not, you have at the very least made a fantastic case presentation to put in your portfolio. It’s a full fledged win-win situation all around.

Happy Awards-hunting, see you in Helsinki!
Niklas

We are very pleased to announce Leisa Reichelt and Amber Case have joined the 2016 Jury. Each is a luminary leader in one of the many ways interaction design impacts humanity.

As the Head of User Research at the UK Government Digital Service in the Cabinet Office, Leisa Reichelt leads a team of user researchers who work in agile, multidisciplinary teams to help continuously connect the people who design public services with the people who use them. She is proud of helping to build a cross-government research community who have made a real difference in the design of services used by millions of people every day across the country. Leisa is in the process of relocating to Sydney where she will join the Digital Transformation Office of the Australian government to build a multidisciplinary team focused on transforming public service design there.

Many of you met Amber Case through her inspiring Interaction 12 keynote “From Solid to Liquid to Air: Interaction Design and the Future of the Interface.” After establishing a Portland (Oregon) research center for ESRI, the California mapping company that bought her startup Geoloqi in 2012, Amber is now a Managing Director for the Tennessee-based company Healthways. She is building a Portland branch of the company, with a focus on the future of wellness and wearable computing. She speaks and writes about improving design technology through a concept called “Calm Technology” — a term that originated at the Xerox PARC research center in Palo Alto, California. In her own words, it describes technology that “gets out of your way and lets you live your life.” Her book on the subject will be published this fall by O’Reilly Media.

Leisa and Amber join design leaders Itamar Medeiros, Alok Nandi, Brenda Laurel, and Sudhir Sharma to complete the six-person international jury. This November, they will meet with Kim Goodwin, our 2016 Jury Chair, in New York City to select finalists and winners from among the short list that you, the IxDA global community, will have chosen through our peer review process. Sign up to be a peer reviewer.

Welcome, Leisa and Amber! On behalf of IxDA, we look forward to your comments and contributions in selecting the interaction design exemplars for 2016.

Make their job difficult: Enter today and share your story! Hurry, the deadline is 13 September 2015.

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When a UX industry friend heard I had agreed to chair the Interaction Awards jury, he was startled because he knew I generally don’t think highly of awards in our field. That’s because the work we do is so highly dependent on context—not only the context of use, but the cultural context of the organization building the product—that it can’t truly be judged as better or worse than other work. Can you say that a slick, futuristic project that doesn’t get built is “better” or “worse” than a boring or slightly flawed design that makes it into the hands of users? Could you decide whether it’s more innovative to create an integrated software/hardware/service experience from scratch…or to make something amazing out of pieces that already exist? Can you judge a game against a hospital system? No. It’s an impossible task.

Thankfully, that’s not our task in the Interaction Awards. The program’s co-chair, MJ Broadbent, says the Interaction Awards are about “creating a legacy” for the community. Your lessons learned may help another team solve their own problem. Your victories may give a downtrodden colleague hope that great things are possible. Everyone who looks at the entries will walk away with a broader understanding of what interaction design is and how designers can improve peoples’ lives. Yes, the community and the jury together can highlight only a few of the projects we find most inspiring, educational, or indicative of the future. But as far as I’m concerned, you win—we all win—the minute you enter.

When our work is described as being “engaging,” most of us feel a certain amount of pride and satisfaction — as well we should. It’s a nice compliment. It means we’ve done our job well. We’ve accomplished something meaningful — and more challenging than it may seem. To say that interactive experiences should be engaging seems obvious, but to actually design, build and deliver an experience that truly delivers on that ideal/that quality is much harder than we often acknowledge. This is exactly why the Interaction Awards honor work that is engaging, work that captures attention, creates delight, encourages re-engagement, brings joy and otherwise delivers meaning.

Engaging work often blends the digital and the physical by incorporating interactive objects with web and app experiences that allow users to move seamlessly from the virtual to the visceral. Last year, we honored three such entries:

1. The Hackaball by Made by Many which teaches children to program a connected object and then create games they can play with one another using the Hackaball proving that coding can be fun, social and creative.
2. The Water Watcher by Smart Design monitors water consumption and provides real time feedback through an ambient counter top display that is then enhanced with a mobile app that provides meaning for the consumption of the data.
3. Cooper worked with the National Pro Grid to launch a new sports league that uses technology on the field of play as well as online to introduce the sport, the teams, the players and to show, in real time how players are performing. This engages viewers, judges and players alike. The overall effect has created tremendous excitement around the sport.

Engaging doesn’t have to involve physical interactions, however. Career Quest by QUEST Alliance is a game that helps young workers in India understand how business works, what skills they need to advance in their careers and how to become better employees. The game is fun and educational – and the students who play Career Quest are able to visualize their futures in new ways.

Our 2015 Best in Category, Learning to See, Seeing to Learn by the University of Pittsburgh [Center for Learning in Out-of-School Environments] and Carnegie Mellon University [Create Lab] teaches citizen scientists — from school children to university students and researchers — to identify, catalog and monitor stream invertebrates in order to track water quality and protect the health of our natural watersheds. Using a zoomable interface that allows microscope level exploration and error checking on assumptions, users are encouraged to explore their natural world and contribute to a growing body of scientific knowledge. Bet you want to check it out now, don’t you?

These are just a few of the great examples of engaging experiences that members of our community are creating around the world. Like the work we see in every category, we know they represent only a fraction of the great work being done in this area by our IxDA community. We can’t wait to see how you have been engaging people, delivering delight and creating meaning.

Celebrate your great work and your success by entering the the 2016 Interaction Awards. Hurry. The deadline is 13 September 2015.

Have you worked on a project that connects people or communities, that facilitates dialogue and encourages communication and active participation? If so, it’s probably a great candidate for entry in our Connecting category. When we think about connecting, we’re not prescriptive about platform or channel — only about facilitating communication between people and communities.  In 2015, we honored five projects in this category, each with a different focus, a different mission and a different point of view.

100 Years of Design by Second Story created a living archive of design history that connects us with each other and with our past. The experience is educational and dynamic, encouraging visitors to contemplate and learn from the past, but also to engage in conversation about contemporary issues in design.

The Nike SB App by R/GA connects skateboarders with each other and with professionals so they can advance in the sport by learning new moves, competing in challenges and earning street cred with one another. It also allows them to capture their personal skate history and see their progress over time.

GreatSchools Local connects parents with the best schools in their area to insure their children are getting a great education. The site serves more than 1.5 million families in eight communities. It provides ratings and reviews as well as help in navigating the education system.

Sentiment News by Yahoo is a social rating system that allows news readers to express how news articles make them feel. The aggregated ratings allow readers to sort news stories by sentiment as well as by topic, creating an interesting and compelling new way to consume news. Need a pick me up? Read happy stories!

Our best in category award went to Skype in the Classroom by Made by Many. This brilliant use of technology allows teachers to connect their classes with other classes, with guest speakers who would otherwise be inaccessible, and it enables virtual field trips to far-away places. Skype in the Classroom brings the world to the classroom and it is enriching the lives of children in more than 100K classrooms in 240 countries around the world.

These are great examples of the power of connecting people and communities via interactive experiences. We know they represent only a fraction of the great work being done by the IxDA community. We can’t wait to see how you have been connecting people and communities in the last year.

Celebrate your great work and your success by entering the the 2016 Interaction Awards. Hurry. The deadline is September 13, 2015.

We are very happy to announce Brenda Laurel and Sudhir Sharma will join our distinguished 2016 Jury. Both are pioneering practitioners and educators who have had — and continue to have — a tremendous impact on interaction design.

Brenda Laurel is well known as an early advocate for girl video game development, a pioneer in developing virtual reality, a public speaker, academic, consultant, and board member of numerous organizations. She has been a formative contributor to design education at U.C. Santa Cruz (Computational Media, Digital Arts and New Media), the California College of the Arts (Graduate Program of Design), Art Center College of Design (Graduate Media Design Program). She was a Distinguished Engineer at Sun Microsystems Labs, where she was co-author of a patent for a new UI for cable television and film. She has worked for Atari, co-founded game development firm Purple Moon, co-founded virtual reality company Telepresence Research, and has served as an interaction design consultant for numerous Fortune 500 companies. Brenda supports the theory of interactivity: the “degree to which users of a medium can influence the form or content of the mediated environment.”

Sudhir Sharma is the founder and president of Design India (India’s largest social community of professional designers) and is also Chief Editor/Publisher of POOL Magazine (for Design, Innovation and Art). He writes and lectures extensively, is an alumnus of the World Economic Forum’s World Design Council, and has been on the jury of several global awards programs. As a design industry leader, Sudhir manages projects across multiple design disciplines and believes passionately in the transformative power of design thinking.

Brenda and Sudhir join Itamar Medeiros and Alok Nandi on the 2016 Jury; one final pair of accomplished jurors will be announced shortly. The six-person jury will gather this November to meet in person with Kim Goodwin, our 2016 Jury Chair. The group will deliberate to select finalists and winners from among the short list that you, the IxDA global community, will have chosen through our peer review process (September 15-October 15). We invite you to be a peer reviewer: https://goo.gl/BCqxVF

Welcome, Brenda and Sudhir! On behalf of IxDA, we look forward to the unique perspective you bring to the discussion and selection process for the 2016 Interaction Awards.

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here are many things about the IxDA Interaction Awards that are unique — and uniquely geared to the work we do in interaction design. One of our differentiators is the way we classify and categorize entries. Most awards align entries around industries (e.g. medical, consumer goods, industrial, etc.) or around the manifestation of the experience (e.g. websites, portals, applications, mobile apps, games, etc.) This approach may work well for other awards programs, but we feel it misses a crucial quality inherent in interactive, experiential work: the intent behind the experience. This is why IxDA has chosen the following categories for our awards:

• Connecting: Facilitating communication between people and communities

• Engaging: Capturing attention, creating delight and delivering meaning

• Empowering: Enabling people to go beyond their limits

• Expressing: Encouraging self expression and/or creativity

• Disrupting: Re-imagining completely an existing product or service by creating new behaviors, usages or markets

• Optimizing: Making daily activities more efficient

Our 2015 Awards Gallery highlights this year’s winners in each category and will bring the categories to life for you in compelling ways — because interactive experiences are, by their very nature, compelling. Take a look.

Please join us in welcoming Itamar Medeiros and Alok Nandi to the 2016 Interaction Award Jury. We are delighted to announce these two distinguished practitioners as the first among a six-person jury who will assemble later this fall under the coordination of Jury Chair Kim Goodwin.  Kim and the six jurors will deliberate to select finalists and winners from among the short list that you, the IxDA global community, will have chosen through our peer review process. (We invite YOU to participate in the peer review — stay tuned for more information coming soon!)

Both Itamar and Alok are accomplished designers who also routinely contribute leadership as educators and community organizers. Among many other distinctions: Itamar was a local coordinator for IxDA Shanghai and has supported numerous IxDA initiatives through the years; Alok founded IxDA Brussels and co-chaired the highly-acclaimed Interaction14 conference in Amsterdam. Learn more about our first two jurors.

Between them, Itamar and Alok have experienced life in over a dozen countries around the world. We look forward to the unique multi-cultural perspective each will bring to the 2016 discussion and selection process.

How does it feel to win an Interaction Award? What changes after you leave the stage and fly away from wherever the Interaction conference has taken you that year? What is it worth to make all the effort to submit your shining project to our design program?

Who could be better to ask this question (and a couple more) than the people we actually had up there, in the Awards limelight of recent years.

The responses we received were incredibly gratifying so we’ve compiled a few into a short video to share with you:

In our fifth year now IxDA has grown a body of exemplary work recognized with Interaction Awards. As practitioners in this wide field we are witnessing so much change in these exciting times that it becomes ever more important to take a couple of deep breaths, and a little time to reflect on why we do what we do.

That has always been – and will be again – the goal of the Interaction Awards. We aim to curate what we believe are the best, most inspiring and effective approaches to “improve the human condition through interaction design” as is boldly stated on IxDA.org.

We hope this video plays its little part in this undertaking. Take a look and see for yourself the value and impact of interaction design, how some of our past winners are doing today and, finally, how it feels to win an Interaction Award.

And maybe take a moment to picture yourself in that position. Submissions are open until September 13, 2015. Go ahead and show us what you’ve got!

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Welcome! The fifth annual Interaction Awards is ready to receive your entries. Building on the success of the past four years, we’re excited to continue inspiring the global interaction design community to share, discuss, and celebrate excellence in our field. For a look back, visit the Interaction Awards Yearbook.

What stays the same

We’ll continue to accept entries in the following six categories: 
Optimizing, Engaging, Empowering, Expressing, Connecting, and Disrupting.

All entries will be evaluated based on established criteria for opportunity, audience, impact, craft and category appropriateness — first through anonymous peer-review by IxDA members and then, for shortlisted entries, by our 2016 Interaction Awards jury.

As in previous years, we actively encourage participation from all over the world and across all levels of experience. Entry fees have not changed and continue to be structured by professional or student status and geographic region. Read more about the Interaction Awards categories, rules, and prizes.

What is new
Thomas Kueber and I are honored to serve as co-chairs for the 2016-17 Awards and we, along with our stellar committee, aspire to build on the outstanding work of our predecessors. Originally conceived in 2010 by founding chairs Jennifer Bove and Raphael Grignani, and subsequently led in 2014-15 by co-chairs Janna DeVylder and Niklas Mortensen, the Interaction Awards program is core to IxDA’s mission. Thomas and I look forward to greeting you at the next Interaction Awards celebration on Friday evening, March 4, 2016, at the Interaction16 conference in Helsinki, Finland.

We are thrilled Kim Goodwin, VP of Product and User Experience at PatientsLikeMe, has agreed to be this year’s Jury Chair. Kim is the bestselling author of Designing for the Digital Age and is a major thought leader who speaks and teaches regularly at conferences around the world. Kim will be joined by an international jury panel of six experts across design domains, whom we will announce in the coming months. We invite you to give us your suggestions for jury members we should be considering.

Adapting to the schedule of the 2016 conference, we’ve also adjusted our milestone dates to give you more time to prepare your submissions and our peer reviewers more time to go deep into every project. This year the peer review process will be open to all IxDA members who would like participate. More information coming soon on how you can get involved.

We have exciting plans in store for this year’s Awards, and we can’t wait to share them with you. In the meantime, please help us spread the word:

• Tweet about the Interaction Awards (#IxDAwards) and follow us on Twitter for updates
• Show your support on Facebook Like the Interaction Awards

Help us to further elevate the practice of Interaction Design this year by entering your favorite project work — and encouraging others to enter theirs — by September 13, 2015. And, please, don’t hesitate to let us know if you have questions or suggestions: awards@ixda.org

MJ Broadbent and Thomas Kueber

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We’re honored to announce this year’s top winners for the fourth annual Interaction Awards!

The top winners were announced at the Interaction Awards Celebration and Interaction15 closing party, sponsored by Bloomberg.

“IxDA is a passionate group of global professionals who are leaders in the field of design. Their mission is to improve the human condition by advancing the discipline of Interaction Design. At Bloomberg we embrace this concept and believe that through elegant design all things are possible,” said Fahd Arshad, Bloomberg’s head of UX Design. “This year’s Interaction Design Award winners fully represent and embody that concept.”

MyMilkman.ie by Frontend.com from Ireland was awarded Best in Show, Expressive Wearable by Sangli Li from Art Center College of Design from USA was awarded Best Student project, and Redesigning Breast Cancer Diagnostics by Designit from Norway from was awarded People’s Choice.

Each category awarded a Best in Category award. Best in Connecting was awarded to Skype in the Classroom by Made by Many from Great Britain. Best in Empowering was awarded to Blindmaps by Blindmaps.org from Austria. Best in Engaging was awarded to Learning to See, Seeing to Learn by University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University from USA. Best in Expressing was awarded to Toot by SUPSI from Switzerland. Best in Disrupting was awarded to Redesigning Breast Cancer Diagnostics by Designit from Norway. Best in Optimizing was awarded to MyMilkman.ie by Frontend.com from Ireland. These winners were selected from over 300 submissions and a finalist pool of 72. Congratulations to all of the Finalists and Winners!

The Future Voice Award, selected by Interaction Award Jury Chair Richard Buchanan from Case Western Reserve, was awarded to Xiangyang Xin, Professor and Dean, School of Design, Jiangnan University, for shaping the approach to Interaction Design in China. The Future Voice Award is selected from outside the Interaction Awards submissions, recognizing work demonstrating the profound potential of Interaction Design and evidence of what Interaction Design could become.

“Our aim for the annual Interaction Design Awards is to surface and share the thought leadership and innovation happening around the globe in our practice area. The 2015 Interaction Award recipients showcase how our practice is dedicated to the improvement of human lives.” said IxDA President Nick Gould. “We’re grateful for the contributions of volunteers to peer review the projects, to the leaders who formed the jury this year, and to Bloomberg for supporting this platform. We hope to continue to build the awards as a means to create a resource of great examples of interaction design.”

This year’s jurors gathered at CIID to deliberate, and we created a collection of video shorts profiling all of our top winners coming out of the session.

We want to thank everyone for participating this year, with special thanks to our major sponsor, Bloomberg, and our jury weekend sponsor, CIID. We look forward to seeing what’s in store for 2016!

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Every year we get an amazing group of people together from all around the world to review and deliberate the projects that made it through the peer review process and into the shortlist. When you have a group of industry tinkers and thinkers from all corners of the world gathered for a full weekend, it would be a terrible waste if we didn't sit them down and get their perspective on our field of work.Interaction Design Today has become an Interaction Awards tradition, and we are delighted to premiere this years video here. now.

Video by Alex Asensi, Music by Mucas.

Enjoy!

You've voted, and we've tallied. We're thrilled to announce the five finalists for the People's Choice Award! The winner of this award will be voted upon by the attendees of the Interaction15 conference on Tuesday, 10th February. You'll then find out the People's Choice when we celebrate all of our amazing finalists at the Interaction Awards Celebration on Wednesday, 11th February!Here are your five People's Choice finalists!

Breast Cancer DiagnosticsDesignit from Norway

Career QuestQUEST Alliance from India

HackaballMade by Many from UK

National Pro Grid LeagueCooper from USA

SignetZiba Design from USA

— By Bloomberg UX

The Interaction Awards are thrilled to share news from Bloomberg of their sponsorship of the Interaction Awards and Interaction 15.

Thanks to Bloomberg UX for sharing this with us!Recently we posted about our passion for designing the user experience here at Bloomberg. Well today, we are pleased to share one of the ways we are bringing that passion to a much broader platform. Building on our strong relationship with the Interaction Design Association's (IxDA) New York chapter, we will be sponsoring their annual event and their leadership awards this year.The IxDA network provides an online forum for people who are passionate about design to discuss issues as well as ways to advance the discipline. This community, started in 2003, has more than 70,000 members today.

"Bloomberg has been an essential partner for IxDA at the local level and a passionate supporter of the design profession," said IxDA President Nick Gould. "We are thrilled to introduce them to the global IxDA community as the premier sponsor of Interaction15 and the exclusive sponsor of the Interaction Awards. We look forward to continuing to build the value of interaction design with them."

The 2015 Interaction Awards will recognize and celebrate examples of excellence in Interaction Design across domains, channels, environments and cultures. In 2014, the Interaction Awards recognized 27 projects selected from over 350 entries and from 27 countriesBoth the annual conference and awards will take place in San Francisco from February ¬9 through February 11.

“We are thrilled to be sponsoring this year’s event and awards,” said Fahd Arshad, Bloomberg's head of UX Design. “IxDA is passionate group of global professionals who are leaders in the field of design. Their mission is to improve the human condition by advancing the discipline of Interaction Design. At Bloomberg we fully embrace this concept and believe that through elegant design all things are possible.”