The Student Design Challenge

The OzCHI Student Design Challenge is an annual international student design competition run as part of the OzCHI conference. The challenge is open to student teams from around the world. It’s a great opportunity to test and improve your design skills and get your work exposed to the wider HCI community.  This competition is suited to students from diverse fields, including human-computer interaction, interaction design, computer science, architecture, and humanities.

Based on the Design Brief (to be released on 23 September 2024), teams work to research, brainstorm, sketch, prototype, and role play to design a solution responding to the brief. At the end of the challenge period, teams submit a video showcasing their design, and a poster. Experienced HCI scholars and designers peer review the submissions to select finalist teams. Finalists will present their design at OzCHI (Brisbane, Queensland in Dec 2024), and a panel of judges, including industry representatives, selects the winning team.

The challenge brief will relate to this year’s conference theme of Beyond Being Human. It highlights the ongoing discussion about how HCI is expanding beyond designing solely for humans to include non-human agents from both the natural world and the field of AI.

Important Dates

• 23 September 2024: Challenge Open / Challenge Brief Release
• 30 September 2024: Submission Link Available
• 4 October 2024: Challenge Closes
• 18 October 2024: Notification and other relevant dates

Prize

Two registration per team of the top three finalists. The top three teams will be awarded and receive a certificate of recognition.

How It Works

This year, taking inspiration from the CHI Conference's Student Design Competition, where participants have an extended period to work on their projects, with the brief released well in advance, giving participants ample time to develop their ideas.

At the start of two-weeks challenge period, student teams will receive a brief containing a real-world HCI research problem.

• Submission format:
• a 5-minute video clip (check technical requirements for video content at CHI)
• a poster
• proof of all team members’ student status

• Submissions are not anonymous and should include all author names, affiliations, and contact information.
• The link for the submission: https://www.dropbox.com/request/yjKriS0OUjHAaJ9DrsGB

This will describe an issue or topic which is relatively broad and open-ended, so teams will need to use their initiative to identify a specific aspect of the problem that they can respond to through their design. To help with this, the brief also includes:

• Contextual information about the problem
• Links to background reading: relevant scholarly literature relevant to the topic
• Instructions for the final submission.

The suggested steps for completing the challenge include a literature review, brainstorming, designing ‘magic machines’, storyboarding, prototyping and reflection. These steps should enable teams to identify a specific design issue related to the topic, and design a solution to address it.  They are not compulsory steps, rather just suggestions. The design of your process is completely up to your team and is part of the challenge!

We ask teams to NOT gather primary data (e.g. interviews, surveys) from external participants. Data about the problem situation can be gathered through e.g. team brainstorming, reports, news articles, scholarly literature and other sources. Evaluation can take the form of reflection, discussion and internal review.

Team Eligibility

• Teams must have from 2 to 3 members
• At the time of the SDC (23 September 2024) all members must be students at any stage of their university career, from undergraduate to postgraduate studies. Team members can be from multiple disciplines, institutions, or even multiple countries or continents.
• A participant may not be a member of more than one team.
• Each team is required to provide the contact details of a Team Representative (who will be our contact during the challenge).

What to Expect: The Challenge Brief

The brief describes an issue or topic which is relatively broad and open ended, so teams will need to use their initiative to identify a specific aspect of the problem that they can respond to through their design. To help with this, the brief also includes:

• contextual information about the problem
• links to background reading: relevant scholarly literature relevant to the topic
• instructions for the final submission.

The Challenge Brief

Click here to download the brief.

Submission Instructions

Well done! Your team is now ready to upload your SDC entry. Please ensure that your submission includes all required documents in:

• One folder: Name the folder using the alphabetical order of family names of team members (e.g., "Anderson_Jones_Taylor.zip").

• Ensure that all files (video, poster) are named identically to the .zip file (e.g., "Anderson_Jones_Taylor.mp4").

Double check that the following files are included:

1. 5-Minute Video Clip 
   Please refer to the brief for content of your video. 

1. Poster (PDF) 
   Please refer to the brief for content of your poster. 
   Poster size: 1080x1920px (posters will be displayed on digital screens)

1. Proof of Student Status 
   Submit valid proof for each team member (e.g., student ID).

Upload your .zip file here: https://www.dropbox.com/request/yjKriS0OUjHAaJ9DrsGB