The Blog

The Interaction Awards rely on the individual and collective experience of its esteemed jury to evaluate and consider the work submitted from around the world. During the jury weekend, each juror will be on point for representing one category’s work to the rest of the jury. We’d like to introduce you to our jury and give you some insight into the categories you can submit your work against, be it student, concept or commercial work. We’ve asked our jury members to give us some thoughts about why their category was important in Interaction Design and what kind of work comes to mind when they think of that category.

Today’s introduction: Anab Jain and the category of Empowering

Anab is the Founder and Co-Director of London- and India-based design studio Superflux, serving as a consultancy and a research lab. Read more about her and her work. 

Empowering: Enabling people to go beyond their limits. 

We asked:

1. Why is it important for us to recognise Empowering in Interaction Design?

The name says it all : Empowering: Enabling people to go beyond their limits. Interaction Design projects that can play a role in increasing the capacity of individuals or groups to make choices, and to transform those choices into desired actions and outcomes, needs recognition. Also projects that are able to build new opportunities for communities, or create power shifts within formal or informal structures in favour of the lesser blessed deserves public acknowledgement.

I would also consider empowering from the perspective of the designers or the makers. So projects which push the limits of what’s possible, projects done under difficult or under trying circumstances, projects which explore the new interaction paradigms or technologies become inspirations within the community and are empowering in that sense.

2. What kind of projects come to mind when you think of Empowering?

Within the sort of broader remit of Interaction Design, these projects come to mind:

http://www.ushahidi.com/
http://drones.pitchinteractive.com/
http://blog.safecast.org/
http://www.fairphone.com/
https://ahwaa.org/
https://crowdvoice.org/
http://fffff.at/free-universal-construction-kit/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-Pesa
http://f-l-o-a-t.com/
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/694835844/pool-tile-by-tile
http://www.grampower.com/

This list could go on, but I’ll stop here for now.

Thanks, Anab! Looking forward to your perspective on the jury.

Can you see your work in this category? Looking for more inspiration? Take a look at the winners from the past two years, and check out the finalists and shortlisters too!

ZocDoc, the 2013 Interaction Award Best in Category for Empowering. See all of the finalists and winners from 2013.

ReadyforZero, the 2012 Interaction Award Best in Category for Empowering. See all of the finalists and winners from 2012.

What Interaction Design work do you think of when you think of “Empowering”?