UsabilityMatters.Org is holding Boycott Bad Design contest since 2005 to provide opportunity for designers, design enthusiasts to create design awarenss by identifying  Bad Designs around us as part of our activities towards the World Usability Day.

The selected entries will be exhibited.
Participation is open to everybody from every country in the world, and from any background- designers and design sensitive consumers! There is no Entry fee.

Please go through the rules and regulations - and in particular - the conditions applicable to the intellectual property rights.

Theme for the Competition

Design Education for a Social Change
 

Education plays a vital role in the development of an active citizenry of a nation. A well educated population is able to take charge of the many issues facing society, including social problems and political decisions, rather than sitting by the sidelines and allowing someone else to do deciding for them.

Social change can be both positive or negative. History is filled with many revolutionary examples that has given us the world we live in today. Even today our educated societies are waging battles all over the world, be it in India against corruption or in the Middle East against governance or else where for a positive change.

The goal of education should simply be to provide opportunity for a student to look at the world through eyes and mind that do not merely accept status quo, but rather see the world as a place that can be changed by its citizens.

UMO's only agenda ever since its formation has been 'Good Design for Better Living'. But more importantly the route we have taken to accomplish this is by educating every one concerned about design through various initiatives. We always believed that spreading awareness is the best form of education. Programs like 'Boycott Bad Designs' has been the most participated and appreciated initiatives of UMO.

What makes it even more special is that 2011's World Usability Day theme is 'Design Education for a Social Change'.

Design in essence is a message, it is a medium through which designers and businesses communicate how a new product and service will make our lives both easier and exciting. We the design community should take the ownership of educating the users and consumers of products and services through better design. So much so that peripherals like communication design and information design around these products and services gets quite crucial in informing and educating users about them.

We welcome all enthusiasts of UMO to participate in our 7th year celebrations by spreading the spirit of good design even more strongly.

UMO encourages all enthusiasts to highlight adverse effects of bad information design every where around us. Please bring in real life issues ranging from a piece of ticket (any ticket), forms/e-forms to labels & product packaging, medicine packaging/ labels, product manuals, movie posters, government notices, news papers, magazines, information systems, maps, signage, webpages and many others that we encounter in our day to day use.

This competition calls on participants to identify bad designs, services and experiences from our everyday life. For inspirations and ideas, you can refer to Boycott Bad Designs , this was a program organized by UMO to identify and raise awareness about the badly designed products.

Awards and Acknowledgements

A team of jury will select the top 10 entries of bad design; 6 short listed entries out of 10 will be awarded a cash prize of Rs 5000 /- (Rs. Five Thousand Only) each. And the rest 4 are eligible for most popular awards.

Popular entries will be decided on the number of votes or likes recieved on the UMO website.

Entrants whose entry is qualified and published on UMO site are eligible to get 50% discount to attend TechEase11: design workshops and UMO2011: International Conference on UsabilityMatters

The top examples will be identified based on their relevance of content, and the context in which the bad design is been identified. 

In case of similar entries, whose entry is recieved first is considered as qualified entry.

The jury and the judgment criteria

For Judgment jury will use criteria such as creativity, humor, visual communication, presentation, persuasiveness, originality, cleverness, relevance of content and execution to identify the winner. An exhibition of the winning and short listed entries will be held and UMO will publish an exhaustive online works report.

Deadline for Submission

Examples of Bad-Designs will be accepted through September 11^th, 2011

Rules and Regulations

• Entries: No Limits on entries
• Do not send the same entry which is already published on UMO site or else where
• Format: Image/photograph with description of the problem area.
• The image/photograph could be either in digital format or a hardcopy.
• The digital images should be of jpeg format with minimum 200dpi resolution (high resolution for reproduction).
• The photographs should clearly depict the problem area identified.
• Entries in hard-copy/print format will not be returned.

Exhibition and Prize distribution

We are going to exhibit the entries in several metros of India and abroad. Dates will be announced.

Submitting your entries

Please mention a little background information about yourself that may help identify you with your work and the email id that will help us get back to you with any communication.
Mail your entries keeping the competition name in subject line to baddesigns(at)usabilitymatters(dot)org.

If you are sending through the snail mail, use the following address:
UMO 7th Boycott Bad Designs Contest’11
usabilitymatters.org,
Flat No. 407, E- Block, Keerthi Apartments,
Ellareddyguda, Hyderabad- 500073. 
INDIA
Phone: +91-984 886 1432

Intellectual property rights
UMO may, in its sole discretion to use the art-work (images, photograph, written content) for any purpose, change, alter, amend, add to, delete from and otherwise modify, including but not limited to, any and all cuts, edits, rearrangements and other alterations, additions and deletions.The responsibility for authenticity of all the submitted content, including the including the art-work and the personal information rests solely with the provider, and UMO will assume no role in case of litigation and copied works. The involved parties shall have to settle the matter themselves, within the conditions the original work was published/released.We respect your privacy and will not be giving out, or sharing your personal information with any third party, for commercial or non-commercial use