The Blog

The submission period for the 2021 Interaction Awards is closed and we are blown away by the work that has been submitted. This year we received submissions from 39 countries! Thank you for truly inspiring and meaningful work from students, independent designers, non-profits, agencies, and businesses in almost every domain. Thank you for all the passion and hard work we can see throughout all your entries. You have contributed to a body of work that, over time, helps IxDA reflect the history of interaction design, as each year’s finalists and winners are added to the IxDA’s library of excellence.

If you entered work, you might be wondering what happens next and who decides the winners? 

There are many things that make the Interaction Awards unique and one of them is our judging process — a process that includes 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, first by joining the global peer review team and then again by voting for the People’s Choice Award. The process looks like this:

Peer Review

Community volunteers from IxDA’s local groups all over the world review ALL of the submissions to identify a shortlist of approximately 75 of the best entries. A call for peer reviewers went out earlier this year through our global network of IxDA Local Groups and social media inviting you and other designers, academics, and leaders from around the world to sign up as peer reviewers. This year’s high response is one of the reasons we love the IxDA community – over 160 community volunteers raised a hand to help with the peer review process! Thank you!

The peer review process is simple. Each peer reviewer is assigned a small subset of entries that they rate and evaluate against established criteria. Every submission is scored by multiple peer reviewers to narrow down hundreds of submissions to a shortlist of about 75 entries – ten to twelve submissions that are considered for each award category.

Jury Deliberation

Under the guidance of the 2021 Jury Chair May-Li Khoe, our esteemed Jury will engage in an intense deliberation process to select finalists and winners in each of the six categories. Typically this is done in person over a weekend but due to the pandemic, this year’s jury deliberation, like everything else this year, will be convened remotely as a mix of synchronous jury work and pairs of jurors working independently during studio times.

The Jury will carefully review the incredible body of work from all over the world, evaluating each entry based on context, opportunity, impact, and craft. It’s a daunting task we ask of them.

Given the astonishing quality of the work submitted this year, the process of selecting finalists and winners worthy of international recognition will be very, very, hard. The Jury will first narrow down each category’s shortlist to a smaller set of finalists, roughly 30 finalists total. Second, they will select a winner in each category  – the very best of the best. And finally, they will select the “best of’s” for concept, student, and show. You can imagine, as they progress, the discussions and decisions get more and more difficult.

Community Voting

All shortlisted projects are eligible for the People’s Choice Award, not just the finalists! Shortlisted work is featured on the Awards site so the community of 100k+ IxDA members can review the work and cast their vote for the People’s Choice Award. While most of the award winners are selected by the Jury, perhaps the most meaningful award is the People’s Choice Award as it reflects the voice of the IxDA community. Once the shortlist is chosen by the peer review volunteers, each member of the global community of over 100k IxDA members is invited to cast a vote for the submission they feel is the best.

Community Voting officially starts in December (watch the website for the exact date) and ends the night before the ceremony at 11:59 pm (Pacific Standard Time) on 4 February, 2020.

Winners Announced

The winners in each category will be announced during the 10th Annual Interaction Awards ceremony that marks the conclusion of Interaction Week.

For the last decade, the Interaction Awards Ceremony has become a gala event that  marks the final celebration of Interaction Week. The winning projects are announced and spotlighted as we bestow the trophies to each category winner, Best Student Project, Best Concept, Best in Show, People’s Choice, and Future Voice winners, and the Future Voice winner. This year we won’t be able to pop champagne in person, but the star-studded event will be presented by community luminaries in a virtual ceremony that will be live-streamed for free to the entire world.

We can’t wait to celebrate the shortlist, finalists, and winners with you! To all of you who have submitted such incredible work, to our legion of peer reviewers, our bad-ass hard working jury, and to the awards team who are working to make this year’s awards cycle come together despite the hard factors that keep us physically apart, we thank you for making the 2021 Interaction Awards awesome.