Announcing the Interaction13 Student Design Challenge


After a successful experience with the 2012 conference, Jeremy Yuille and I are the co-chairs for the IxD13 2013 Student Design Challenge, sponsored by Intel Labs.

Entries are open now, and close on December 1, 2012. Be in the running to win a scholarship to Interaction 13 in Toronto, and take part in an exciting master class around the design challenge.

The challenge theme for 2013 is Playful Technology

With every passing year, technology becomes further embedded into every aspect of our lives. With its increasing ubiquity, our traditional relationship, where technology is a tool for completing tasks and accomplishing goals, is receding. Now, people (especially young people) look at technology as a way to connect, and even interact with in a less-structured and playful manner.

This year, Interaction and Experience Research (IXR) at Intel Labs and the IxDA challenge you to consider these paradigm shifts in what technology means and how we interact with it. Building on the work that Intel Labs has been doing around the changing relationships we have with technology, we want you to explore the experience implications of “playful technology.”

Frequently when we design products and services that utilize technology, we think in terms of satisfying a user need, or enabling the user to achieve a goal, complete a task, or solve a problem. What if we instead think about designing playful experiences for people, in which there is no end goal, people are encouraged to explore, be spontaneous, and creative? By allowing people to experiment, collaborate, create, and share, this goes well beyond gameplay. Look at children’s play for inspiration, where often the simplest raw materials lead to completely unexpected outcomes and hours of engagement.

See http://interaction13.ixda.org/studentdesign.php for more information and to enter.

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