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

Money Matters

User Experience of Banking and Personal Finance

Traditionally banks have been the nucleus of everything to do with money and personal finance management. However rapidly changing market, new technologies and economic uncertainties have empowered the customers there by putting the onus on banks to serve for the changing customer needs. The basic reasons why even today all of us including both developed and rural communities need to interact with banking systems is when we earn, borrow, save, invest, grow and spend. This is why banking and financial institutions are growingly investing in improving the over all user experience of the customers through all channels.

In this light UMO invites you all to participate in UMO 2012 Bad Design Contest. We encourage you to identify the bad experience/s you had in the banking and financial systems sector. Be it opening a bank account, operating your account, customer service, online transactions, investing through your banks, credit card, buying/selling, multiple accounts, foreign exchange, etc., and to the point of closing account.

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 8th year celebrations by spreading the spirit of good design even more strongly.

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 and will be awarded a cash prize of Rs 3000/- (Rs. Three Thousand Only) each.

Entrants whose entry is qualified and published on UMO site are eligible to get 50% discount to attend TechEase12: design workshops and UMO2012: 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 02^nd, 2012

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 8th 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