Design Challenge 2024: Designing for a Better World

The Design Challenge will open to entries in May 2024. Submissions are due on or before September 16, 2024.

As designers, we are concerned with, as Herbert Simon noted, “how things ought to be.” This year’s World Usability Day theme asks us to consider how things can be improved to create a better world for all. We have come a long way as a society, yet we still face fundamental human challenges such as war, poverty, climate change, renewable energy, and social justice. Designers can play a critical role in addressing these challenges by creating solutions that seek to improve the human condition and make the world more just.

For 2024, The WUI Design Challenge continues to call on the design community to share evidence of specific impacts of insights from user research and evaluation on detailed design decisions. A focus on users in design is primarily supported through research into target usage contexts and evaluation of designs in use. For 2024, we seek submissions to the WUI DC that showcase excellent user-focused design that addresses the theme of Designing for a Better World. Submitted Design Challenge entries will present evidence of user research and evaluation that had a clear and 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. 

Winners will be announced on World Usability Day, November 14, 2024. The WUI DC collaborates 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 2024 HCI International Conference. They can also have a written account included in the proceedings as a paper or late-breaking results (with a later deadline for their manuscript).

Award Winners and Honorable Mentions will be recorded on this web page, along with previous winners and mentions from 2020-2023 (see below).

For 2024, entries should be tightly argued and well-evidenced reports that provide details of user research and evaluations with compelling evidence of how this demonstrably improved both product and process value. Entries should address the WUD 2024 theme, Designing for a Better World. Winning entries will demonstrate how a combination of contextual user research and evaluation of quality in use have significantly contributed to the (improved) success of 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 judging criteria will be applied to the information provided in each entry. They are:

• Quality of contextual/user research
• Quality of UX/outcomes evaluation
• Explicitness of connections between user-focused work and design decisions
• Quality of evidence for connections between user-focused work, design decisions, and outcomes

Criteria will be evidenced by a submitted report of up to 10,000 words (excluding tables and figures) with links to video or other internet content as appropriate. The submission form also asks for short summaries of the research, evaluation, and the impact of each. We expect to see the following when assessing submissions:

Quality of Contextual/User Research 

What research was carried out and when in relation to the overall development process? Why was it carried out? What methodology was followed? How was this appropriate given available resources and project goals? What were the key discoveries and insights?

Quality of Evaluation of UX and Usage Outcomes 

What evaluation was carried out and when in relation to the overall development process? Why was it carried out? What methodology was followed? How was this appropriate given available resources and project goals? What were the key discoveries and insights?

A process diagram for the project can be used to indicate when research and evaluation were carried out.

Connections between user-focused work and design decisions

What were the implications of research discoveries, insights, and evaluation results for the envisaged/current design? How did (re)design decisions relate to these discoveries, insights, and results? What were these decisions? What would have happened without these discoveries and insights? How explicit can you be about the connections between user-focused work and design decisions? Which decisions were based on clear implications? Which set a general direction without implying a specific design decision? Which were creative leaps that were inspired by insights?

Appropriate design representations (e.g., wireframes, workflows, conceptual models) can provide necessary detail on (re)design decisions.

Quality of evidence for connections between user-focused work, design decisions, and outcomes.

We do not expect all connections to be explicit. For implicit connections, various forms of creative leaps are expected and legitimate, but they must be argued to depend on discoveries, insights, and evaluation results. For explicit connections, we expect to see clear rationales for how discoveries, insights, and evaluation results direct (re)design decisions. Ideally, the validity of earlier implicit design connections will be demonstrated through later evaluation activities.

Winning entries will not be merely user-focused or user-centered but user-soaked, because they are saturated with transformative understandings of who uses a digital artifact, how and why they use it, and how they benefit from it.

The Design Challenge will open to entries in May 2024. Submissions are due on or before September 16, 2024.