Design Competition
The Intercollegiate Design Contest is into its 4th year of competition. In this design competition, competing teams take a very “plain jane” business document in paper, and re=design it for multiple channel delivery. Within the CCM Industry, channels can be mail, e-mail, web and mobile. Also, Accessible themes play a part. Each version has to be understandable, based on a variety of disabilities. [Typical would be blindness, poor vision or dyslexia.]
It is this richness and diversity of the CCM field which makes this Contest so challenging. Teams are expected to be creative and innovative. Designs also have to conform to a variety of CCM industry standards where applicable. Examples would be Postnet, MICR, OCR, PDF417, QR and even WCAG 2.0.
Steve Jobs once said: “It doesn’t make sense to hire smart people and tell them what to do; we hire smart people so they can tell us what to do.”
“To build on that, we have built a strong industry, but it needs to change at the speed of the market. So, we welcome new members with new talents to help us improve the way we communicate. We welcome the fresh perspective of Gen Z, and we need you to help us break barriers.”
— Scott Draeger CXPA M-EDP
Scott Draegar of Quadient is the primary sponsor of the Xplor Intercollegiate Design Contest. He believes that any student that has the Design Contest on their resume is an instant hire in the CCM Industry. We agree. The reason being, many companies will spend a lot of money, time and human resource on these types of conversion processes. It is a common challenge in the CCM Industry to reface or repurpose business applications. This Contest has a solid project management and orgranizational component that requires a lot of team coordination, as well as design and technical savvy. We believe this challenge to be one of the best in the field for most professional and technical organizations involved in university chapter programs.
— Paul Abdool, BBA, M-EDP, CCMP, ECMs
Contact Xplor HQ for more information how your university can sign up teams for the contest. The contest time-frame is usually late in the calendar year, with design in January-February and presentation in March. Winners receive passes and travel money to attend the Xplor Global Conference usually in April. Non-winners can also often receive free conference passes. Teams will be given opportunity to present their designs to the audience in a special session. This session has received fave reviews from past attendees, Industry and the President of Xplor International, Skip Henk.
— Skip Henk, EDP, President Xplor International
To see how the Design Contest works, and how to respond to the challenge, you can run your own comparison. Please download the “plain jane” design and Ryerson GCM Team B final design from our 2019 Contest.