Design Challenge
Design Challenge 2022: User-Soaked Design
We seek submissions to the WUI DC that showcase excellent user-focused design for a general audience. The Design Challenge (DC) supports the World Usability Initiative (WUI) in its goal to secure recognition of the value of user focus in design work. As a first objective, WUI seeks UN recognition through including World Usability Day (WUD) in its calendar. Beyond this, WUI aims to inform policy at the highest international levels. The WUI DC supports this aim through its potential to bring examples of best practice to the attention of international policy makers and develop a strong understanding of the benefits of user focused design practices.
A focus on users in design is primarily supported through research into target usage contexts and evaluation of designs in use. Entries will present evidence of user research and/or evaluation that have had a clear valuable impact on interaction, product and/or service design recommendations and decisions. Such evidence should let the general public (including UN decision makers) ‘get it’ by demonstrating connections between research, evaluation, and worthwhile design outcomes. We expect to see appropriate design representations (e.g., wireframes, workflows, conceptual models) with accounts of how research and/or evaluation have guided design decisions or have influenced future product and service direction. Winning entries will not be merely user-focused or user-centered but user-soaked, because they are saturated with transformative understandings of who is using a digital artifact, and how and why they are using it.
Winners will be announced on World Usability Day, November 10, 2022. The WUI DC is in collaboration with the HCI International (HCII) conference, which sponsors three awards (Gold $1250, Silver $1000 and Bronze $750). The Gold, Silver and Bronze recipients of the WUI DC Awards winners will be cordially invited, with complimentary registration, to present their innovative, impactful design work in a special session during the 2022 HCI International Conference. Award Winners and Honorable Mentions will be recorded here, along with previous winners and mentions from 2020 and 2021 (see below).
For 2022, entries will be presentations that provide details of user research and evaluations with compelling evidence of how this demonstrably improved both product and process value. Entries can address the WUD 2022 theme, Our Health (https://worldusabilityday.org/2022-theme-our-health/), which connects with the UN’s third sustainable development goal (SDG). We also welcome entries related to any UN SDG (https://sdgs.un.org/goals). However, we want entries to showcase an entrant’s best “user-soaked” design work, so an entry may not address a UN SDG.
Winning entries will clearly demonstrate how contextual user research or evaluation of quality in use have significantly improved a digital product or service. The goal is to promote the value of user focus and how this complements other design activities such as aesthetics, product strategy, software quality or performance engineering.
The DC jury and judging criteria are currently being finalized. Details of both will be added here until the Design Challenge opens to entries in mid-June 2022. Submissions will be due on or before September 20, 2022.
Design Challenge 2021 winners are listed below.
Gold
$1,250
Silver
$1,000
Bronze
$750