Technicalities

Faculty Advisor

Each team must designate a faculty advisor to oversee their project.  Any level of faculty may be deemed the faculty advisor. The advisor is responsible for ensuring ethical, safe and appropriate research standards are followed throughout the relevant phases of the design project. A faculty member may serve as an advisor to a maximum of two teams, this provides a preliminary filter and quality check of submissions.

Proof of Student Status

To be eligible for the student competition, all participants must provide a signed letter from their academic supervisor confirming that at least 50% of their working week is spent following an academic course of study when working on the team's submission. All team members must provide proof of their student status.  Each team must provide one proof package - a single file containing scanned signed letters for each team member - together with their project submission.

Student Team Requirements

Teams must consist of at least two, but no more than five, students. There is no limit to the number of teams that may compete from any given University.

Submissions are invited from all students at all stages of their education, from design schools and colleges, from undergraduate to post-graduate. While not a mandatory requirement, it is strongly encouraged that the team’s composition be multidisciplinary.

Advancing to Round Two

Based on reviewers' rankings, up to 10 teams will be invited to compete at the UPA 2009 conference in Portland. Authors of accepted submissions will be expected to attend the conference in order to participate in the later rounds of the competition, and to present their submissions to conference attendees. Due to the collaborative nature of the team competition, it is essential that at least two of the team members attend the poster session and oral presentation at the conference.

We regret that UPA cannot provide funding for authors of accepted submissions to attend the conference.  However, we strongly recommend that authors of accepted submissions sign up as UPA Student Volunteers, in order to obtain complimentary conference registration and other benefits.

Teams will be notified of acceptance or rejection on 15 April, 2009.  Accepted abstracts will be published in the Student Competition section of the UPA program proceedings.  Teams must immediately sign and return the copyright form sent upon acceptance.

In preparation for the second phase of the competition, all accepted teams must submit a completed poster design (electronic copies in PDF format) two weeks before the conference to allow the judges a chance to familiarize themselves with the submissions

For further information

Ilona Posner: iSDC2009@usabilityprofessionals.com
Tira.Cohen: iSDC2009@usabilityprofessionals.com