When we thought of launching the first Indian UX contest, we were apprehensive. We weren’t sure if our audience could dedicate the necessary time to satisfactorily complete a full set of user flows and wireframes. Surprisingly, both the number and quality of the submissions exceeded our expectations. Deciding on the winners was an extremely difficult process, and we would like to thank everyone who participated – we know you all put a lot of thought, time and effort into your submissions.
We know you are all anxious to hear who the winners are, so let’s cut to the chase:
Note: We received many entries which had visual designs. Visual design was NOT one of the goals and does not feature in our evaluation matrix.
First Place – Techved Design
This design was the most complete and scored the most points in our final tally (the scoring matrix and methodology is described below). The home page was well structured and created a lot of motivation and engagement upfront. The IA was clean and all tasks were well presented. There were some assumptions made by the designer – for instance – voting cannot occur during an ongoing competitions.
All-in-all we believed this was the best submission. Congratulations to the winner! 
Second Place – zdmedia
In a very tight race, the second place entry goes to zdmedia. There were some interesting and innovative feature ideas here, like the way the submissions were presented in a gallery format and just the right amount of information was presented for each one. We also liked the structure of the homepage it created enough engagement for visitors by showing recent and popular items.
It lost marks on the fundamental aspects like navigation and visual hierarchy. Some of the tasks too seemed a bit difficult/confusing to accomplish.
Third Place
This was a tough one, we ended up having a tie for third place. Both will receive the full third place prize
Third Place (1) – Abhishek Thakker
The most simple and minimal UI entry we received. Clear action oriented navigation supporting the most common and important tasks. We also enjoyed the thought process that was described and use of personas.
The only thing this entry lacked was a sense of completion and a bit more detailing of the actions a user can take on a specific screen.
Third Place (2) – Sheetal Elango
Awesome visual design for the home page! we really loved this. having said that, we felt it was not engaging enough for a contest website. The inside pages have a persistent navigation but the home page almost looked like a static content website and not an active community driven competition.
Deeper into the website, it supported most user tasks elegantly. The IA was also very well structured.
Honorable Mentions
Swati Gupta
This was complete and very well thought website – technically correct IA and navigation, but lacking in innovation.
With a bit more pizazz, this could have easily become one of the top 3!
Judging Panel
Anirudha Joshi – faculty member, Industrial Design Centre, IIT Bombay.
Ninad Raval – Manager, User Experience Design, Directi.
Rameshwar Soni – Interaction Designer, Directi.
Scoring metrics and methodology
With guidance from Mr. Joshi, we prepared a set of goals for the UX competition. We gave each goal a certain weightage and then rated all entries on these goals and how well each submission fared.
Once all of us filled out the score sheet, we averaged out the scores and arrived at the final 4. We then discussed each one of these and went into details of what we liked and didn’t like. The choice of top 3 was decided upon by all judges mutually.
All entries had something or the other interesting about them and gave us different perspectives.
We learned a lot about our audience and how to effectively judge a UX competition. We would love to hear your feedback, in terms of what you thought and how the contest and how we could improve it for next time.
Thank you all again. Stay tuned for details on our next competition.
Thanks,
Ninad Raval
Manager, User Experience Design, Directi.
