Hasta La Ideas

Interaction design students were juried by Interaction Design Assocation and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

Yesterday evening IxDA (the global Interaction Design Association) and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation announced the winner of the IxDA Student Design Challenge at Interaction14, IxDA’s yearly conference, which is currently taking place in Amsterdam.

Kevin Gaunt (rightmost on photo) of the Umeå Institute of Design in Sweden has been chosen as the winner of the student challenge. The challenge focuses on the design of the experience of the child health record, which is a critical component of current health information systems worldwide. This is also a key focus of the work done by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Over six million children under the age of five died last year; more than half of these deaths could have been prevented with existing interventions. The global public health community could save millions of lives in the coming years by gaining the trust of families and informing them about how to access effective information about healthcare and hygiene. But, health organizations remain challenged by how to reach remote populations with life-saving health information when these children or their parents do not speak their country’s national language or cannot read.

Rethinking and designing that experience was at the heart of this year’s challenge.

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