I understand that finding capable judges is a daunting task, but having the judges from the same university as the finalists are from, does give people a chance to say bad things, and sometimes may leave a bitter impression on participants.

I never intended to say that anything was or was not “fair”. There really is no fair in this, and I don’t think you or any of the judges made any sort of mistake. I certainly don’t see this as a “gripe war”. I respect that the selection process is difficult, and all of the students involved did a good job. I honestly did not have very much invested in winning… I was disappointed that the winning solution seemed to me to be contrary to things we saw in our research. That’s all.

From what I’ve heard, the student entries this year were even better than last year. That’s in no small part due to the work you and others put into this. Thanks for all the work you put into the competition!

But I do believe in correcting incorrect facts. The criteria for the student teams were published on the web page for the call - these criteria were used throughout the competition, at all stages of reviewing and judging. All reviewers and judges were briefed on these criteria. And in the end, the students were judged on their overall ability to respond to those criteria. Now if there are criteria you feel are more appropriate, why not put your energy into helping to define the criteria for next year?

On the follow-up comment: Thanks for your comment - the perception that full implementation of a technical prototype is needed or preferred needs to be clarified/rectified. In my experience (as someone who scopes, designs and evaluates and moved research prototype to product), CHI oriented designers have always *had* to be clear about implementation, because otherwise implementation can lose the essence of the design ideas/intent. But that doesn’t mean technical implementation. Perhaps that needs to be stated explicitly in next year’s call and reviewing instructions to remind people.

And on that note, I invited one of the folks who was vocal about encouraging broader design perspectives and envisionment methods to be a judge this year, and to my chagrin he turned us down. It was a shame, his input might have brought a different perspective. We will never know. So please, I’d encourage you who have strong opinions to write a blog entry to get more involved, to send specific actionable comments to next year’s chairs, and perhaps to volunteer to help with the hard work it takes to bring this off at all. If you know better criteria that can be followed by our volunteer reviewers and judges, let them know what they are.