Microsoft Next Generation PC Design Competition

Positive response to the Next Generation PC Design Competition convinces Microsoft to make it an annual event.

Last year, Microsoft asked industrial designers worldwide a question: What if the physical components, size and shape of the PC were dictated by how people use it – not by the two-decades-old concept of a box-like central processing unit (CPU), keyboard and monitor?

The answers flooded in, including nearly 200 proposals from amateur and professional designers worldwide. The response was so great, in fact, that Microsoft plans to make the Next Generation PC Design Competition – the contest it created to ask the question –– an annual event.

Microsoft will begin accepting entries on Aug. 15 for the second annual installment of the competition. In addition to offering more categories of awards and prizes than last year, Microsoft will spotlight the competition at next week’s Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC), where prototypes and models of last year’s winners will be on display. The competition will also be showcased at the 2006 national conference of the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA) in October.

Microsoft received inquiries from hundreds of designers – even a 14-year-old girl from India – and recorded as many as 18,000 downloads of the entry kit. When the deadline arrived, 195 entrants from 33 nations had submitted designs. Not only was the level of interest surprising for a first-time competition, so was the diversity of the ideas.

In addition to promoting the competition at events such as WinHEC, Microsoft has added more prizes and an additional award. Designers will compete for first-, second- and third-place Judges’ Awards of US$25,000, $15,000 and $10,000, respectively. Last year, there was a single first-place judges’ prize. An Educator Award also has been added to reward a faculty advisor if he or she is named in a winning entry.

The competition’s four design categories – entertainment, communications and mobility and personal productivity and living/lifestyle – have been retained from last year, as have the Public Choice Award, selected by voters online, and the Chairman’s Award, selected by Microsoft Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates. The reward for each is U$25,000 and $10,000, respectively.

The IDSA has gotten involved in the competition, President Ron Kemnitzer says, because it helps build bridges between the design and PC industries, as well as nurtures young, undiscovered design talent.

“This competition makes one thing very clear: You don’t have to work for a big design firm to shape the future of the PC,” Kemnitzer says. “Anybody can be an innovator, wherever you are.”