Discover our Finalists and Winners

America’s healthcare system is the biggest black box out there. Research shows that people are consistently confused about how to navigate their benefits, and stumped on how to pay for care once they do get it. The current system puts the onus on the consumer to make hard decisions in an unsympathetic and outdated space. We knew better was possible.

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.

Sudden Cardiac Arrest (SCA) kills over 350,000 people every single year in the U.S. alone. It is the leading cause of death for adults over the age of 40 and also leads to the loss of nearly 23,000 youth annually. Despite being a massive public health issue, survival rates have unfortunately remained dismal at around 10% for decades. Fortunately, there’s a treatment for Sudden Cardiac Arrest (SCA) – a life-saving shock from an Automated External Defibrillator (AED). If used quickly, an AED can be highly effective. However, the problem is that AEDs are not readily accessible, and too often don’t get to the people who need them. Avive is on a mission to change that. With each passing minute prior to treatment reducing a victim’s chance of survival by 7%, an AED’s accessibility, design, and usability make the difference between life and death. Our strategic design collaboration with Avive focused on developing a first-of-its-kind connected AED system. In addition to a standard AED’s capabilities, the Avive Connect AED™ is a portable device that, when spread across a community, acts as a mesh-network of coverage enabling support to any individual within the radius of that network. When activated, the network of AEDs and local responders are alerted to find the closest AED to the victim. Once an AED is activated, it provides diagnosis and instruction to both professional and pedestrian users supporting a victim of sudden cardiac arrest.

DODU is an AR-based multimodal interactive literacy teaching aid for Chinese children aged 3-7 with dyslexia, which calls children's senses such as sight, hearing, touch and movement through Augmented Reality and multimodal interaction, so as to achieve effective and interesting literacy training effects.

DOLL-SITTER is a toy set of pop-up smart books and application for sex education for children aged 5-8, using dolls which play the role of body organs and children played as their protectors. Through the interaction of dolls and smart pop-up books, children can learn about sex education, establish life scenes, and discuss with their parents the sex education issues in the “difficult to speak” life. Parents use APP and cards for parent-child interaction, complete the task of protecting the doll together, talk about sensitive topics, and answer children’s doubts about the body through the elf. It aims to cultivate long-term Comprehensive Sexuality Education, stimulate children’s curiosity about sexual knowledge, and weaken the embarrassment of traditional parents in front of sexual knowledge.

In 2010, airlines were disappointing customers even while they were posting profits. It was clear that something needed to change. Armed with the insight that travel can be complicated, but the tools shouldn’t be, Delta set out to transform the way people experience flying.

Children who experience extreme fear of dentists would put their dental health at high risk. DentrixBuddy is VR game experience to be used in the dental office and an AR application that continues the narrative at home.

Chat messages, emails, websites, books… digitally written text is ever present in our daily life. But those neatly arranged letters hide secrets. Who wrote them and how? Did they hesitate? Was it a furious typing spree fuelled by a wave of emotions? Or did they carefully choose every word, deleting and retyping them over and over?

The aim of this project was to act as an initial research probe into this technology, taking a human centered design approach, to explore how the surgeon’s could interact with a system like this. The two main goals were to: firstly, develop a user interface that could display the decision made by the AI algorithm in an understandable way so that the surgeon could enact on it and secondly, develop a standardised workflow for the biopsy, excision and anastomosis procedures as the key theme in this field is a lack of standardisation. The final design of the system has been developed to be controlled by gestural inputs. In a real world scenario, there would be an accompanying manual input.

Programming is intimidating. Common programming stereotypes involve sitting at a computer looking at lines of dense symbols and code. This perception discourages people, particularly children, from learning programming.Dr. Wagon dispels these impressions and facilitates a new way to learn programming that is interactive and concrete. Dr. Wagon was designed for children ages 6-12, and is intended to provide children with a playful and more accessible introduction to computer programming.

Focusing on the phenomenon of preschool children’s reluctance to brush their teeth, this project is designed to provide preschool children aged 3-6 years old with a series of smart toothbrush products.

Earth Bits is a data-driven journey to raise collective awareness around the environmental crisis, allowing visitors of maat - Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology in Lisbon - to experience climate change from scientific evidence. Earth Bits stimulates reflection on the relationship between science, humanity, nature, and technology in a very objective way. It shows the energetic transition and the current crisis, inviting visitors to explore the intrinsic relationship between people and the planet, understanding the repercussions of our choices and the impact of our actions. As designers, we facilitate the flux and translation of data as fuel for creating knowledge, cultural value, and critical thinking. Not merely providing information or solutions, but creating a new grammar of understanding, to read the complexity of our fast-changing time. Visitors can explore and experience knowledge with all their senses in the storytelling of four parts: four digital and interactive installations, graphics, animated videos compiled with data based on scientific evidence. An example of this approach is a digital wallpaper “painted” with data from the ESA – European Space Agency’s Copernicus program Sentinels (satellites to monitor our planet) that visually translates the scientific information for the public. The video – updated every month – shows the correlation between CO2 emissions by human activity, global warming, and natural phenomena such as floods, ice melting, rising sea levels.

Intersection worked with a team of leading education, design, gaming and media firms to create the Edward M. Kennedy Institute, a new interactive museum located in Boston, Massachusetts. The Institute immerses students and patrons in the U.S. Senate’s mission, history, and work through digital touch points, thoughtful user experience design, and a unique overall approach. We led technical design and development, creating a platform of exhibit and tablet-based applications that enable interactivity between facilitators, visitors and digital content. EMKI redefines the traditional museum landscape of guided tours and self-education, and introduces a new way for patrons to learn, through participation.

Efficia ECG100 is a low cost, portable, tablet based ECG device for cardiac screening that utilizes the mobile platform, offering portable ECG solutions (with 12 lead quality data acquisition) for price sensitive emerging markets.

Depression is the silent epidemic that affects 1 in 5 teens. Statistically, you or someone close to you has suffered from depression, but unlike a physical illness, and often mistaken for teenage angst, it is invisible and many people suffer alone. Depression and anxiety can make everyday tasks such as getting out of bed or household chores very difficult. The difficult part is knowing when and how to ask for help, as many people feel too ashamed to reach out.

India’s 200 million+ farmers did not have access to a personalized farmer support app. Seedworks partnered with NetBramha to create a comprehensive digital platform to address farmer problems.

Engaging men in family planning and nutrition programming provides an opportunity to move towards better health and gender outcomes. To meet this goal, we designed two innovative programs in rural Bihar, India, using Human-centered Design (HCD) research, co-creation, and prototype testing, grounded in behavioral science approaches.

‘Enhans’ is a system designed to improve doctor-patient communication within the NeuroImaging and Interventional Radiology (NIIR) Department at the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (NIMHANS) in Bangalore, India. Being an institute of eminence, NIMHANS receives a large amount of patients from all over the country. Due to their different socio-economic backgrounds and the fact that they speak several different regional languages, it is often difficult for patients to communicate efficiently with the doctors. On a daily basis, both doctors and patients are faced with several challenges that lead to miscommunication and inhibit the patient from being able to take informed decisions about their treatment.

An Equine Vet’s job is a difficult one involving long hours and lots of driving. The pressures are heightened buy the high financial value of horses and their emotional value to their owners. Despite their size, horses are surprisingly delicate animals and require a great deal of care and oversight to keep them healthy. Simple ailments such as infections or lameness can quickly escalate into serious, potentially life-threatening issues. Colic for example is the number 1 cause of premature death in horses, causing 200,000 fatalities each year. If spotted early it is treatable however, in most cases the signs are not visible until its too late. For this reason, equine vets need to monitor sick horses closely – often with round-the-clock hourly checks to assess their condition.

We are a development team from an Estonian government organization (IT and Development Centre of the Ministry of the Interior). Our team is specialized in police systems which are used outside in the street in police cars. The development team consists of 15 members. We are entering this project into the disrupting category as the developed system is playing role in our security and the more officers want to use it the more secured our society becomes. Since 2004 Estonian police has been using a query system in their cars. 10 years is a long period for an IT system. In 2015 we started to develop a product called APOLLO, which would replace the old system. Currently our team is working on the new ePolice product which helps police officers to get information they need “in the field” without using walkie-talkies.

Can Metaverse today replace reality? As the global COVID-19 pandemic distanced humans from each other, an expedition for new ways of communication began to rise. The concept of ‘Metaverse’ became widespread as a solution. However, VR interaction methods developed so far are biased toward audiovisual aspects. There should be more elements to reproduce for actual communication. Considering the early concept of VR suggested in Stanley Weinbaum’s 1935 SF novel <Pygmalion Glasses>, which included vision, hearing, touch, heat, and smell, humanity is still half as successful.

Today 1.5 billion people lack formal identification. Without identification, their economic opportunities are severely limited. Thousands of organizations, and governments all around the world are trying to deliver the critical and essential services in education, health, and finance needed to end poverty. Instead of deploying billions of dollars towards this fight, funds are getting wasted on challenges in identification.

Expressive Wearable explores clothing as a communication tool. This project imagines a scenario in which clothing expresses the wearer’s attitude directly without the concern of adhering to social conventions.

Eye Conductor helps people express themselves through music using only their eyes and facial gestures.By translating eye gaze and facial expression into music, Eye Conductor enables people who are otherwise unable to express themselves creatively.

FRICKbits is a self-quantification application that reveals the art hidden within your daily patterns. The result of a collaboration with data artist, Laurie Frick, FRICKbits tracks your everyday movements, expressing them as unique and personal data portraits.

Feeling Climate Crisis is a series of kinetic data sculptures that visualize the ongoing climate crisis. These sculptures are made with natural plant parts juxtaposed with electromechanical elements. Together they create movement patterns that express climate data. The project creates an experience that allows viewers to ‘feel climate data’. Each sculpture expresses a specific data parameter from the list of planetary vital signs. These parameters include surface temperature change, per capita CO2 emissions, global tree cover loss, etc. Each parameter has historical data starting from 1978 to 2018. Data is referenced from a paper titled World Scientists’ Warning of a Climate Emergency.

Jury Chair May-Li Khoe nominated the Feminist Coalition to honor their mission to champion equality for women in Nigerian society with a core focus on education, financial freedom and representation in public office, and to recognize how the Coalition was able to create a financially-transparent food, water, medical, security, and legal aid services system in a record-breaking amount of time under extreme conditions of duress.

FiDO is a circular physical interface connected with a mobile app, which is a plug-in to different semi-autonomous vehicles. FiDO collects driver data and traffic information to give personal recommendations. Consequently, drivers can provide active feedback by rotating FiDO during their drive. This entire process is represented in purple and blue gradients to communicate what the vehicle is processing.

Fiiiit helps track, analyze, and share people's activities while taking the stairs. It helps people gain health by doing exercise more, and reduce carbon footprint by taking elevators less.You swipe a RFID card on devices at both floor A and B, then you'll get instant exercise feedback, such as calorie consumption, exercise duration, or whether you have moved too fast. You can set exercise goals and achieve it, or compete virtually with your families, friends, colleagues inside the same building.Your exercise data will be sent to our server, so you can review your workout records, manage your future exercises, or share your achievements with others.Fiiiit is now a full functional prototype that has already been deployed inside the library of Beijing Sport University. And we are doing our best to make the final product much more smaller, and much more user friendly.

Finavia is one of the most prominent organizations in the aviation industry of Finland. We run airports all across Finland and aim for creating an integrated and smooth passenger experience. With this website renewal project, our goal was to establish the website as the key digital touchpoint that would help align all our digital touchpoints to our vision of smooth traveling by providing the passenger control over their experience, and journey.

Tutkihankintoja.fi is a service that allows citizens, companies, and interest groups to explore the Finnish government spending. It provides information on state spending for goods, supplies, and services down to the purchase order level. For the first time, all this information is available in an online service. Tutkihankintoja.fi improves transparency in the use of public funds and provides information on the market to companies.

Our inspiration for the Little People™ Apptivity™ Barnyard came from watching young children play with apps and toys. They didn’t view the world as “digital” vs. “physical” but rather moved fluidly between both modalities and even used them together. We therefore set out to reinvent our classic farm playset to reflect how children naturally want to play. The Little People Apptivity Barnyard represents a new level of interactivity, where the app and toy are fully integrated and augment each other. The app provides a rich, living world while the conductive playset and figures provide a new, tangible way to explore this world. Everything works with everything else, just as children expect!

Out of the 39 million blind people around the world, only 10% know how to read/write in braille. Even those who know braille cannot understand the shapes of many objects around them. Through Fittle, we are trying to make visually challenged children learn braille letters, spellings of words, and shapes/forms of the objects that these words represent—all at the same time, engaging them through a puzzle.

FoldWorld is an innovative AI-powered AR game that embodies the fun of paper folding.

If you have an interest in local foods and food hubs, you will have heard of FoodHub. It is one of the most sophisticated, well-developed (and still developing) networks in support of these goals anywhere in the U.S.” Jeff Deiss, USDA Rural Development, Oregon State Office. FoodHub is an online community for professional food people. It’s open to commercial buyers, producers, distributors, media, industry suppliers, farmers’ market managers, and trade associations in California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana and Alaska.

SmartGauge is Fordʼs first LCD screen instrument cluster, built into their 2010 hybrid sedans. Our goal was to effectively modify the behavior of the driver to achieve the optimal fuel efficiency. And do this without distracting the driver by actually reducing visual demand. Working with the simple truth that hybrid enthusiasts want to get the most from their new cars, we proposed to Ford ways to help drivers understand how their behavior affects their fuel economy over time. We also used cognitive visual research in color shape and form to create a safer instrument cluster that was easier to read in peripheral vision. We delivered an experience that was more effective, safer and, most importantly, FUN. In the past, hybrid drivers have been disappointed with their actual mileage not meeting the advertised rating. When it comes to fuel economy, the secret is that how a car is driven matters as much as how a car is designed. For the first time, SmartGauge puts the information needed to drive efficiently behind the steering wheel. Re-envisioned hybrid-focused gauges help drivers better understand the rhythm of hybrid driving, and how small changes in driving style can result in big savings at the pump.

FreshBooks for iPhone is FreshBooks' first mobile app built to complement our leading cloud accounting web application. Our goal was to create a quick and easy mobile version of our web application to help our customers save time billing their clients so they can spend more time with their small businesses. This meant not only optimizing the web app experience for a smaller screen, but also challenging ourselves to consider the real human contexts a mobile accounting application might be used in. The result is a product that people love and that is already helping thousands of customers save time.

Gaggenau Live allows customers to connect to the showroom from the comfort of their homes, via their mobile, tablet or desktop browsers. Customers who scheduled an online 1-1 tour can watch the sales consultant’s live stream and digitally interact with Gaggenau products. The solution provides an enriched, interactive and personalized experience by letting customers review details of their product of interest, configure the products based on their personal preferences, create a list of favourite products, view inspirational product/kitchen images, show their kitchens to sales consultants for guidance and invite family members, friends, architects etc. to join the live session. Gaggenau Live is also designed to digitally empower sales consultants by broadening their product demonstration abilities during a showroom tour and personalizing the experience through a consolidated customers’ interaction dashboard. The solution allows consultants to manage their appointments, review customers’ information and interested products prior to the live session. During the session, the consultant has high control over the experience by simultaneously tracking customer actions through an interaction analyser and tailor the tour instantly based on customer interest. High integration with the product catalog enriches product demonstration experience and allows consultants to push interested products to the customer's screen or configure the products on behalf of them and create an offer list. What makes the solution special is that it is designed to make customers feel like they are in control of the experience by letting them actually interact with the space and products rather than just staying as viewers.

The Cleveland Museum of Art challenged Local Projects to transform the art museum experience, utilizing technology without diminishing the traditional gallery design. Given this, our studio created a suite of new interactives for Gallery One, including six “Lens” interactives that allow visitors to connect with art in new ways. One features a facial recognition experience that connects visitors’ facial expressions with masterworks from the collection, while another allows visitors to search the collection by drawing different shapes. The Collection Wall is a 40-foot wide multi-touch screen that features over 3,600 artworks in curated layouts, inviting visitors to explore and create their own tours. An iPad application, ArtLens, features these tours through wayfinding, image recognition, and curated content. The main concern was how to make the technology merge with the traditional gallery environment, keeping the main emphasis on the curated artwork and space, while still prompting visitor engagement with the interactives. It was a serious challenge to find the right balance between learning, contextual understanding and fun.

People are increasingly interested in sustainable lifestyles and urban community gardening to grow their own food, but the challenges in maintaining these spaces include the limited time and skills for beginning gardeners, and the lack of organization to coordinate community gardening efforts. There are many advances in computer vision and AI technologies that can be used in agriculture. We see an opportunity for AI technologies to solve problems facing framers such as climate change, yield-reducing pests and weed infestations, and to speculate on autonomous systems that can help urban farmers manage and care for their gardens. In collaboration between communication design and industrial design students, GardenSpace and Eden were proposed as conceptual solutions to this problem.

With the service provider Good-Loop, newspaper readers can connect to content moderators to help them slow down the rapid spread of online dis-/misinformation. The fake news in its present form has evolved and become more challenging to identify: Synthetic dis-/misinformation is treated the same as all other internet content, showing up in search results & social media. Without the infrastructure in place, content moderators will find it hard to distinguish between real and A.I. manipulated audio files, texts, images, & videos.

Australian hip-hop legends Hilltop Hoods and Google Play collaborated to create an interactive music video that harnesses mobile capabilities to capture a world turned upside down, as experienced by band member Dan Smith during his son’s leukemia treatment. Two 3D environments rendered in code are navigable by rotating the phone, translating a personal journey into a powerful digital experience. Each listen on Google Play generated a donation to support young Australians living with cancer.

No longer a privilege for the few, access to 17 of the world's most treasured museums is now available to anyone with an internet connection. Google Art Project welcomes us to the halls of London's Tate Britain, Madrid's Reina Sofia, St. Petersburg's Hermitage. See The Birth of Venus in Florence then Starry Night in New York -- from a curator's perspective, down to each microscopic crack in the canvas. The remarkably elegant and intuitive interface feels perfectly on-brand for Google, without distracting from the visually rich content on the site. Visitors can move through the museums on an interactive floor plan, choose the works they'd like to see and read informative curator's notes. It's immersive. Personal. Beyond digital, it's a real-life experience.

Government Digital Service (GDS) of the United Kingdom is honored for its exemplary culture change through design. Through openly communicating about and sharing their work, they provide an inspiring model for the U.S., Australia, and others.

GreatSchools Local is a community school guide that helps specific cities connect with parents to help them get their kids a great education. Today we reach over 1.5 million families in 8 communities

For nearly two centuries, the industrial revolution has made humans the dominant force in shaping the planet. 2020 marks an important turning point when the mass of man-made objects exceeds that of biomass, and it becomes crucial to rethink our relationship with nature.

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.With the Grin platform, orthodontists can overcome the current challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic by strengthening existing patient relationships and reducing chair time by virtually reaching into their patients' mouths as if they were present for an in-person appointment.

Gundulas Stories is an interactive learning environment that enables children to acquire knowledge playfully and improve their sensory and motor skills. The concept combines classic "storytelling" with new technologies. The teacher reads a story that is visualized by a projection. During the story, the children are encouraged to participate and interact physically and linguistically with their movement and language. The main character of these "learning stories" is a tortoise named Gundula. She is an object made of wood which is brought to life by the projection. To read the story and to control the interactions an iPad app was developed. Using the app the teacher can make each and every reading an individual experience while retaining control over the running time of the story. Based on established teaching practices like reading aloud, it's easy to integrate the learning environment into an existing curriculum and does not restrict the educator. By activating all the senses Gundulas Stories provide a holistic learning experience for both children and educators.

As more and more people were streaming content on their mobile devices HBO approached HUGE to plan and bring to market a suite of applications that would allow users access to the complete library of acclaimed HBO content through an interface that delivered the feel of the HBO experience. HBO had previously developed HBO GO as an on demand service that existed solely on HBOGO.com. HUGE's development of the HBO GO app aimed to harness the vibrant content of HBO to deliver a truly unique and seamless digital experience on the iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch and Android.HBO GO was developed to provide an ideal place for current HBO subscribers to not only view, but become fully immersed in, HBO's selection of programming. By expanding their platform, HBO Go would give more value to HBO subscribers while also creating a compelling product that could attract new subscribers.

HSBC is one of the world’s largest banks. We serve 40 million customers in 64 countries. Our ambition is to become the most digitally accessible bank in the world. We’re committed to making all our digital channels accessible for people with disabilities – websites and apps for customers; cross-media campaigns for publicity; internal tools and eLearning for staff. To achieve this all our staff, contractors and suppliers need to deliver accessibility in their work – 235,000 staff globally creating digital documents, 30,000 working on digital projects, marketing agencies all over the world, and countless vendors providing digital tools.