IxDAwards
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Our Community Peer Review process

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


Meet our Jury Chair — Cynthia Savard Saucier

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.


Help select 2023’s best examples of Interaction Design

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.


Last call: 2023 Early Bird rates end today!
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!


2023 Interaction Awards Call for Entries

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


Our 2022 winners
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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.
Watch the 2022 Interaction Awards ceremony on YouTube.


Join the celebration!
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.


People’s Choice voting is open until 26 April!
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.
- Review the shortlisted projects.
- Find the project of your choice.
- Vote! Click on the ‘Vote’ button in the top left.
- Share with friends, family, and colleagues! The more votes you get, the better your chances.
Voting Rules
- All shortlisted projects are eligible for People’s Choice (not just finalists).
- You may only vote once.
- Voting officially ends on 11:59 pm (Pacific Standard Time) on 26 April.
Make your voice heard and vote today!


Gabriel White is our 2022 Interaction Awards Jury Chair
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."


Announcing the 2022 Shortlist
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.


Open call for peer reviewers
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.
📨 Watch your inbox around 7 February 2022 for more details
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Submission deadline extended!

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


Submissions open

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.


Vision 2022

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.
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Hugs, new highs, and hopes for the future
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!


Ready to pick up the torch?
Want to help the Interaction Design Association (IxDA) find and recognize the best interaction design in the world today? Now is the time to raise your hand to be considered for the role of Co-Chair for 2022 Interaction Awards.IxDA is a community of doers and makers, so if you watched the 2021 Award Ceremony and thought to yourself, “I’d love to help make the awards program even better,” now’s your chance to step up. Volunteer to lead the program as Co-Chair or lend your skills and time on one of the many work streams for the 2022 awards program.
Why the Interaction Awards matter for our community
Interaction design is about people: how people interact with each other, and how people interact with the world around them. The Interaction Awards celebrate the work done by interaction designers every day, to create meaningful relationships between people and the products and services that they use. The Awards recognize and promote recent outstanding works across domains, platforms, and cultures, highlighting the best examples of interaction design from around the world.For over a decade, the Interaction Awards have celebrated excellence in Interaction Design. By recognizing and honoring best-in-class work, from all over the world, by individuals, companies, and students, we elevate our craft and the perception of our craft.
Expectations for the Awards Co-Chair role
Co-Chairing the Awards program is not easy. To be successful in this role, you’ll need to be comfortable leading with charismatic authority since you and everyone else on the team are volunteers.Here are the main expectations for the Awards Co-Chair role:
- Able to devote between 5-10 hours a week in meetings and working on team priorities and deliverables from April 2021 to April 2022.
- Able to assemble and manage a diverse, global team of volunteers across multiple work streams and timezones (it helps if you have a lot of friends in the IxDA community or can make friends quickly!)
- Willingness to strive towards diversity and inclusion benchmarks.
- Ability to balance practicality and aspirations from a wide range of inputs to evolve the awards program to best serve the diverse IxDA community.
- Accountable for delivering key outcomes throughout the year, as determined by you, your team, and IxDA leadership.
- Communicating and updating progress to the Executive Director and IxDA Board
Apply to lead!
Think you’ve got what it takes to lead this important program? Submit your application to be the 2022 Awards Co-Chair by 15 March 2021.


And the winner is...
We’re honored to announce the Interaction Award winners for 2021! On 5 February 2021 our community tuned in for the 10th Annual Interaction Awards to celebrate winning projects from all over the world presented via a virtual gala celebration live-streamed thanks to this year’s exclusive Sponsor, Amazon Design.
Watch the Awards!
The recording of the live ceremony in its entirety on the Interaction Awards YouTube channel. Enjoy delightful, real-time reactions from the winners, and catch moving presentations from:
- 2021 Jury Chair May-Li Khoe and the entire 2021 Jury
- IxDA Board President Kevin Budelmann
- Awards co-founders Jenn Bove and Raphael Grignani
- 2016 Jury Chair, Kim Goodwin
- Surprise appearances from past winners and Awards Co-chairs
- Master of ceremonies; 4-time author and co-chair of the very first Interaction Conference, Dan Saffer!
Our 2021 Interaction Awards winners
Best in Category, Connecting
Bukas: Material Messages for Filipino Migrant Workers and their Transnational Families
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong
Best in Category, Disrupting
Urinal Design to Cater Muslim Men Better do Istinja Ritual
Kohler Design Studio with Somia Customer Experience, Indonesia
Best in Category, Empowering
Basheer | Teaching computational thinking to novice-technology users
Indie Submission, Pakistan
Best in Category, Engaging
Sniffing out the differences collective, India
Best in Category, Expressing
Planet Word, the world’s first interactive museum of language
Local Projects, United States
Best in Category, Optimizing
The Pearl Divers. A musical pavement that brings to life an old emirati tradition
Daily tous les jours, Canada
Future Voice
People’s Choice
Public Math, United States
Best Student
Agents of Action: Rebuilding the Future
Umeå Institute of Design, Netherlands
Best Concept
Special Projects, England
Best in Show
Animo – Rehabilitation Game for Young Stroke Patients
Umeå Institute of Design, Sweden


Cast your vote and tune in to see who wins
Our vision for the 10th annual Interaction Awards is all about YOU – the 100 thousand plus members of the IxDA community. Leading up to Interaction Week and the Awards Ceremony, we strove to make it easier for you to participate in the Awards with lowered fees, a new “indie/nonprofit” category, and delivering the content of the Awards site in multiple languages. Ultimately, we want to increase the exposure you’ll receive for winning, and to make it clear to you, our community, and the world beyond, what the award means; that your work is best-in-class. We can all point to the winning work and say THAT is excellent Interaction Design!We invite you to celebrate the incredible milestones set this year at our live ceremony on Feb 5th at 7 pm Eastern via the free live-stream on our YouTube channel:
- 351 submissions - The highest submission count in the history of the awards!
- Entrants from 39 countries - The most nationalities ever represented!
- More entries from outside North America for the first time ever!
- 13 countries represented by the finalists and winners who will be revealed in the Awards ceremony!
An historic celebration for our community!
The products, services, and systems our community designs touch far more people and play a more integrated role in most people’s daily life than most movies so this Awards night is our Golden Globes. We won’t be able to clink champagne glasses together in person, but the awards spectacular will be a celebration on a truly global scale and YOU are invited!You won’t want to miss performances by Box of Beats, and Figma the Musical as well a who-who list of presenters from our community. This year’s jury chair May-Li Khoe, and the entire 2021 Jury will be joining live (another first!) to present awards with community luminaries such as 2016 Jury Chair, Kim Goodwin, IxDA Board President Kevin Budelmann, Awards creators Jenn Bove and Raphael Grignani, and our master of ceremonies; 4-time author and co-chair of the very first Interaction Conference, Dan Saffer!After the final keynote on Friday, the Award Ceremony will begin at 7 pm EST and you can invite your colleagues and friends to watch too because - for the first time ever - will be broadcast as a free, livestream to the world via YouTube thanks to our exclusive sponsor, Amazon Design.
Cast your vote for the People’s Choice Award.
Even if you’re new to the community or just hearing about the Interaction Awards for the very first time, there’s still an important role for you to play in this year’s awards program because one of the awards is chosen entirely by YOU, the IxDA community. Review the shortlisted projects and cast your vote for the People’s Choice award by midnight Feb 4th!
Who will win?
Tune in on Friday to watch the exciting LIVE Awards ceremony as we celebrate the finalists and reveal the winners!
2021 Interaction Awards
Exclusively sponsored by Amazon Design
5 February 2021 at 7 pm EST
Watch via the Interaction Conference, or FREE live-stream on YouTube


Amazon Design makes 2021 Awards accessible to everyone for the first time.
IxDA is pleased to welcome Amazon Design as our exclusive partner in presenting the tenth anniversary edition of the Interaction Awards. This partnership demonstrates Amazon’s support of IxDA’s mission to improve the human condition through interaction design.
“Amazon Design is honored to help IxDA make this year’s Interaction Awards presentation accessible to everyone for the first time. We believe that the inspirational work being recognized here will not only challenge practicing professionals but encourage a revolution of future designers to Think Big and do even bigger.” says Corey Dangel, Executive Producer - Amazon Design Community Leader.
As a platform, IxDA provides an opportunity for interaction design professionals from around the world to come together to learn and share. Through the Interaction Awards, that theory and practice is evaluated and celebrated, honoring the very best examples of interaction design.
Over the last decade, the Awards have enabled IxDA to build a living library of Interaction Design case studies that are an open, online resource for professionals, educators, students and the general public. This year, with Amazon’s support, the ceremony will be live streamed at no charge for the global community to attend online.
“IxDA is grateful for this significant commitment from Amazon Design,” said Kevin Budelmann, IxDA President. “As we mark a decade of excellence for this initiative, Amazon’s partnership enables us to make this year’s Interaction Awards presentation accessible to everyone for the first time.”
The Interaction Awards will be presented as the closing event of Interaction 21, taking place online from 3-5 February.


Announcing the 2021 Shortlist
Raise a glass to the shortlist!
After several weeks of hard work by Peer Reviewers, the Awards team, and finally input from our esteemed 2021 Jury, we’re thrilled to share the 43 projects representing 21 countries that have been selected for inclusion into the 2021 Interaction Awards Shortlist!E,
veryone 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 deeply value the work you put into your submissions. 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. Congratulations to all for being part of Interaction Design history!
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.
Vote for your pick for the People’s Choice award!
Enjoy a tour of the shortlisted projects below and vote for your favorite. 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.
All shortlisted projects are eligible for the People’s Choice Award, and online voting is open now. People's Choice voting will close on 4 February 2021, 23:59 EST. To vote, click on an entry below, and then click the big blue button at the top. You'll be taken to a unique for that entry with a vote button at the top.
The entire community is invited to vote! The winner of the coveted People’s Choice Award will be recognized during the Interaction Awards ceremony that will be live-streamed for FREE to the world at 7 pm ET on the 5th of February 2020.
Connecting
Facilitating communication between people and communities
- Abridge: Helping People Stay on Top of Their Health
- Atlantis - A Sea Turtle Simulator
- Bukas: Material Messages for Filipino Migrant Workers and their Transnational Families
- Good Loop – Slowing down the spread of synthetic dis-/misinformation
- Microsoft Bing COVID Tracker
- PAVERS - AR reporting service for broken facilities to make safe sidewalks
- Planet Word, the world's first interactive museum of language
- Sniffing out the Differences
Disrupting
Re-imagining existing systems via new behaviors, usages, or markets
- Animo - Rehabilitation Game for Young Stroke Patients
- Artemis 389 - Patient Transfer Equipment
- Basheer | Teaching computational thinking to novice-technology users
- Blue: Smart Assistant
- Bridge: A New Way to Participate in the Political Conversation
- The smart learning lamp
- Urinal Design to Cater Muslim Men Better do Istinja Ritual
Empowering
Empowering – Helping people to do things they otherwise couldn’t do
- Animo - Rehabilitation Game for Young Stroke Patients
- Basheer | Teaching computational thinking to novice-technology users
- Beep Beep! Intravenous infusion leak detector
- Blue: Smart Assistant
- Immersive Reader and Learning Tools in Microsoft Edge
- Kico - Hearing agency for hard-of-hearing people
- Lotus – Next generation NICU
- Pik Tek : Rhythmic instrument inspired by biomimicry and adapted to people with disabilities
- The smart learning lamp
- Traits - Sketching in video
- Woodland
Engaging
Engaging – Capturing attention, creating delight and delivering meaning
- Animo - Rehabilitation Game for Young Stroke Patients
- Atlantis - A Sea Turtle Simulator
- Blue: Smart Assistant
- Camino del Perezoso (Sloth Path)
- EF Study Buddy Smart Speaker
- Escape from Godot: Absurd, existentialist theater mashed up with escape room mechanics
- Public Math Postcards
- Rinnekoti: Empowering care with emotion
- Sniffing out the Differences
- The End of the Day
- The Pearl Divers. A musical pavement that brings to life an old emirati tradition
- This Great Plague, a DIY Immersive Experience
- Welcome Home - an at-home immersive story box
Expressing
Expressing – Enabling self expression and/or creativity
- Basheer | Teaching computational thinking to novice-technology users
- Journio - Enabling students to express their emotions during this time of pandemic
- Paper Phone
- Pik Tek : Rhythmic instrument inspired by biomimicry and adapted to people with disabilities
- Planet Word, the world's first interactive museum of language
- Samsung Galaxy A - #danceAwesome
- Soft Speakers: Interaction Design with Digitally-Embroidered Fabric Actuators
- The Pearl Divers. A musical pavement that brings to life an old emirati tradition
- Traits - Sketching in video
- Woodland
Optimizing
Optimizing – Making daily activities more efficient
- Abridge: Helping People Stay on Top of Their Health
- Agent Workspace - Redesigning the conversation interface for customer support agents
- Agents of Action: Rebuilding the Future
- ASR (Automatic simple respirator)
- Escaping the Strange Loop
- florio HAEMO the app and dashboard - developed to support people with haemophilia and their treating physicians
- Ibrida, the neighborhood bread beer
- LMS Descomplica - University Entrance Exams Platform
- M2 ICU Mobile Medical Intensive Care Unit
- The Pearl Divers. A musical pavement that brings to life an old emirati tradition
- Urinal Design to Cater Muslim Men Better do Istinja Ritual