Introducing the Design Challenge

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Today we’re announcing the first of a series of Design Challenges as part of the Mozilla Lab’s Concept Series. We’re inviting design-focused students from around the world to develop new ideas & prototypes for the future of the Web.

Overview

The Design Challenge is a series of events to encourage innovation, and experimentation in user interface design for the Web. Our aim is to provoke thought, facilitate discussion, and inspire future design directions for Firefox, the Mozilla project, and the Web as a whole.

For the inaugural edition of the Design Challenge, we’re focusing on highlighting the creativity of students: if you don’t know what’s impossible, you’ll accomplish it.

If you’re a student, help us answer the question: “What would a browser look like if the Web was all there was? No windows, no unnecessary trappings. Just the Web.”

How it works

In this first edition of the Design Challenge, we’ll only be accepting and mentoring 20 students from around the world. We’ll then be inviting the “best in class” to mentor the next round of participants, and scale the design effort.

Each edition of the Design Challenge will focus on a different question. The first question we’re looking to address is: “What would a browser look like if the Web was all there was?”: As the Web becomes even more ubiquitous, we’ll never have to leave it. Whether it’s on touch tables, giant wall-sized screens, mobile devices, or just our computers, exploring the interactions for browsing a windowless Web will become ever-more important in the next couple of years.

To get started, you’ll need to submit a mockup of your idea. This can be anything from a napkin drawing, to a wireframe, to a polished graphic or video. Through the Labs discussion forums, you’ll be able to exchange and discuss ideas with fellow students. (To facilitate the free exchange of ideas, all content and contributions will be licensed under appropriate open source licenses.)

We’ll then identify the most promising ideas, and their creators will be invited to participate in a mentoring program where we’ll work together to refine ideas & mockups into interactive prototypes. This will include participation in online sessions and courseware focused on user experience design.

Final polished prototypes will be posted and honors for “best in class” will be bestowed.

Important Dates

  • March 1st, 2009 – Submission deadline for Initial Mockups
  • March 6th, 2009 – Invitations to participate in mentorship phase sent out
  • March 9th – March 27th, 2009 – Mentorship phase where ideas & mockups are refined
  • April 12th, 2009 – Submission deadline for Prototypes
  • Late April – Wrap up event with awards bestowed for “best of class”

Getting Involved

If you’re interested in participating, please do join us in the discussion forums – you’ll find information on how to participate here.

If your school is interested in participating, please contact us at conceptseries@mozilla.com.

14 responses

  1. shinu wrote on :

    if there is a browser that need to be designed then i guess it need to be something like a cube, where each face will be a url and the user will just have to change the face of the cube to see the other browser window. It not only look more realistic but also give the user the ease in use.

    The present browser support only the 2D views until you have the some fash or applet or the silverlight installed which take care of it. Think of the browser in a 3D view, so if you wish to check the yahoo mail. You just login to the yahoo and voila the things are all popping up in the 3 D way.

    Also if the client side languages are made little robust then this will make the application responding faster. As of now there is no technology that the browser had inbuilt to do the processing, i mean its more on the server to decide the processing. when we have this feature added then it became a more of a browser monster which is capable of doing not only the website viewing but also take care of the user preferences.

    Hope this could be a reality

  2. Rajiv Nath wrote on :

    Great initiative, but do you that no one other than students can come up with ideas… i.e what about people working in other fields other than IT.

  3. Eduardo Faria wrote on :

    It’s always good to hava some oportunities like this one.

  4. Nathar Leichoz wrote on :

    התרגום האחרון שפיתחנו הוא עבור Firefox. קראו את הערות ההפצה (אנגלית) להוראות ורשימת בעיות ידועות.

    http://tinyurl.com/fxdesign

  5. Martius wrote on :

    Please, French people are not all narrow minded !

    “The second is another communist comment” not really clever, please think before you write !

    This is a great challenge concept, but the subject matter is maybe a little to large to get “useful” ideas.

    Congratulations to participants in advance.

  6. Manish Bansal wrote on :

    I guess i have an wonderful idea,
    I don’t know if anyone else got the same thought of, but it would be very much revolutionary and usefull to save time and money with a great realtime user experience…
    so let me take sometime to draft it properly. will put it on this blog…

    Thanks 🙂

  7. ouaziz mouhcine wrote on :

    bonjour alex
    Enfaîte ce que tu voulez ça existe est c sur les page de recherche de live.com tu na qu’a l’essayé

  8. walls wrote on :

    “Se serait sympa surtout de gagner quelque chose”

    You’ll get an honour from Mozilla. Isn’t it enough ^^? And your ideas are not for nuts, but for an open source project, with something to write on your resume.

    What will be great is a server entirely linked with the client (drag&drop…)

  9. freed wrote on :

    Bonjour aurele
    L’échange est le moteur du web.
    Donner une idée est aussi saugrenu qu’espérer en être rétribué.
    Si tu peux aujourd’hui t’exprimer sur le net, c’est uniquement dans le cadre de l’échange.
    L’échange d’un espace de discutions contre une idée, d’un navigateur contre un testeur, d’un principe contre un concept.
    Vouloir monnayer quoi que ce soit sur le net c’est espérer la mort du web libre.

  10. Mulasse wrote on :

    I love french people on internet.
    Commenting in french on an english page. Nice one.

    The first french comment (alex) is incomprehensible. This is just words, not really a sentence.

    The second is another communist comment. Mozilla is free, so don’t complain when they ask some ideas to the community to improve their soft. Nobody forced you to participate.

    I think this kind of events is great. User are involved in development. Regard every good idea is really beneficial to any software.

  11. Horia Dragomir wrote on :

    A great idea.
    I know that some designs and concept will make their way into production, so you get a big thumbs-up for listening to the people!

  12. aurele wrote on :

    Se serait sympa surtout de gagner quelque chose genre un emploi ad vitam eternam, un truc sympa, parce que donner ses idées pour des prunes sa va deux minutes 😉

  13. Murat wrote on :

    This a great news

  14. alex wrote on :

    En utlisant la souris ou le doigt, il faudrait que les résultats de la recherche puisse ouvrir instantannement la ou les pages d’acceuil dans des fenêtres de taille à définir du moteur de recherche Mozilla.
    Plus convivial, + vivant ,+ attractif pour les sites + de visiteurs + de designers more money for everybody !