Student Design Competition
Tuesday I found out that no one from Carnegie Mellon was selected as a finalist in CHI’s Student Design Competition. Based upon what my advisors have told me, there is no single set of criteria with which the entries are judged. This makes it very difficult to know exactly what to do to win. We knew this going in, so I was not surprised to not be picked.
Given that this was the Student Design Competition, I spent quite a bit of time trying really hard not to tie our design to any specific technology. It seems, however, that the finalists all were very specific in their implementation details, and most had actually prototyped the designs (whereas we had just prototyped the interface but not the actual technologies which could drive the device).
The winner was “Chick Clique”. They actually looked at the same user group we did (freshmen college girls), attempting to mitigate potential dietary problems (as we did). Based upon what I saw of their project and what we saw in readings and heard from the nutritionists and health specialists we interviewed, though, it seemed to me that their proposal could actually encourage the anorexia or bulimia issues we were trying to prevent…
But C’est la vie (hey, I was in Montréal, I can say that). Turns out next year (CHI 2007 in San Jose woo!) they will have a Student Research Competition. That should be interesting.
Je t’aime…;)
I was one one of the organizers of the CHI 2006 Student Design Competition. I never think it is worth getting into gripe wars about what is and is not fair regarding a reviewing and judging process where the criteria are based on interpretation of “objective” criteria, because the whole house of cards regarding reasoned “objective” judgements will come crashing down.
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.
Elizabeth, I may not have been clear in what I meant by criteria for judging. Based upon the stories I’ve heard, it is very difficult to make the final decisions for which projects to pick—for example, emphasizing technical details or not. Yes, the web site and other materials were indeed quite clear on what problem needed to be solved and how we could go about solving it—but that’s the base criteria for even being accepted, and not some form of objective criteria for selecting finalists.
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!
Congratulations to the Student Design Competition organizers this year, as there were no judges affiliated with the same Universities, which the competing teams were from. I hated it last year when some finalists were from CMU and the judging panel had Jodi Forlizzi in it as well. With no disrespect to the capabilities of CMU team or Jodi, I think it is just not right for such a competition to have judges from the same Universities. If you want to bring repute to this competition then such cases should be avoided at all costs.
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.