What is the Student Design Challenge?

The OzCHI 2018 Student Design Challenge (SDC) is open to student teams from around the world. At the beginning of the 24 hour challenge (7 April, 10am AEST), participants will receive a design brief. Teams work rapidly to research, brainstorm, sketch, prototype, and role play to design a solution responding to the brief. At the end of the 24 hours, teams submit a video showcasing their design, and a written paper. Experienced HCI scholars and designers peer review the submissions to select finalist teams. Finalists will present their design at OzCHI (Melbourne, Dec 2018) , and a panel of judges, including industry representatives, selects the winning team. Recent Challenges have focused on topics such as designing for ageing, for sharing, for online collaboration.

Read the BRIEF
icon Important Dates
  • 15 March:
    Team Applications Open
  • 5 April:
    Team Applications Close
  • 10am AEST 7 April, 2018:
    24 Hour Design Challenge begins
  • 10am AEST 8 April, 2018:
    24 Hour Design Challenge ends
  • 4 June:
    Finalists announced
  • July-September:
    Finalists refine submissions
  • 1 October:
    Final Submissions Due
  • December:
     Presentation at OzCHI Conference (Melbourne)

Prizes Prizes

Finalist teams

  • can win up to $300 monetary prize per team
  • will be invited to present their entries to a panel of judges at OzCHI (covering 1 full student conference registration or 3 one day OzCHI registrations)
  • are eligible for travel scholarships to support them in attending and presenting at OzCHI (up to $600 for interstate Australia / NZ teams, up to $1000 for international teams)
  • will have opportunities for mentoring, networking with leading HCI scholars
  • may be eligible to have their work published in the OzCHI 2018 Proceedings.

At OzCHI (Melbourne, Australia 4-7 December 2018) the final winner will be announced, and prizes and certificates will be awarded.



icon OzCHI SDC

The OzCHI Student Design Challenge is an annual international student design competition run as part of the OzCHI conference. Since the first SDC in 2009, the competition has grown to the point that hundreds of students from around the world participate annually. This competition is suited to students from diverse fields, including human-computer interaction, interaction design, computer science, architecture, and humanities.

At the start of 24 hour challenge period, student teams will receive a brief containing a real world HCI research problem. In response to the brief, teams will have 24 hours to:

1. Develop a video prototype or concept video of 2-3 minutes,
2. Draft a paper explaining the design process and concept, and
3. Create a design journal blog which captures design process and ideas.


icon Team Eligibility
  • Teams must have from 2 to 5 members
  • 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).
  • Each team must submit an application form

If you are interested in research or thinking about doing a PhD, this is a great opportunity to expose yourself to an academic world and experience what it feels like to do research.


icon What's New?

This year, we are providing in advance the details of the four optional Mini Challenges, along with some suggestions for Designing in 24hrs.

During the challenge, we will use a Slack group to stay in touch, and Google Drive & YouTube for team submissions.

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.


icon Preparing for the SDC

So that you can enjoy the fast-paced experience of the Student Design Challenge, we recommend you read and discuss how to Prepare for the SDC and our suggestions for Designing in 24hrs.

  • Arrange a design space, equipment (e.g. video cameras) and materials (e.g. colourful card & post-its) to make an attractive video submission.
  • Discuss team roles, timeline and practical arrangements (don't forget eating and sleeping!)
  • Practise recording, managing, editing and uploading video.
  • Take a look at the SDC archives www.ozchi24.org. and some OzCHI short papers
  • Make sure you can access PDFs of papers on the ACM Digital Library through your uni library's online systems.


icon The Brief: What to Expect

At 10am AEST on 7 April, we will post here the Challenge Brief. 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.


icon Video Tips & Guidelines

To best present your design we suggest your video should:

  1. briefly describe your specific problem situation
  2. present the design concept and main features
  3. show or explain how the prototype would be used in a specific scenario
  4. briefly reflect on strengths and limitations.

You don't need to describe your design process but can show early prototypes, sketches etc., if they help explain your ideas. Videos should be concise and avoid repetition: 2-3 mins is ideal (max. 4 mins). We will ask teams to upload video to YouTube (please test in advance to see how long it will take to upload).


icon Committee Members

Romina Carrasco, The University of Melbourne, www.rominacarrasco.com

Zhanna Sarsenbayeva, The University of Melbourne, zhannina.github.io

Sarah Webber, The University of Melbourne, www.sarahwebber.me

For any queries or concerns, please contact us at sdc@ozchi.org



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