The Industrial Designers Society of America's annual awards program has been open for exactly a month now, but designers still have over seven weeks to prepare and submit their entries. This marks the 33rd year of the International Design Excellence Awards (IDEA), which celebrate the practice across several categories—products, sustainability, interaction design, packaging, strategy, research and concepts—and "for the fourth year, The Henry Ford in Dearborn, MI, will house the winners in its permanent collection."A jury of independent design experts will use the following criteria in selecting winning designs:

· Innovation: design, experience, manufacturing
· Benefit to the user: performance, comfort, safety, ease of use, usability, user interface, ergonomics, universal function and access, quality of life, affordability
· Responsibility: benefit to society, environment, culture and economy
· Benefit to the client: profitability, increased sales, brand reputation, employee morale
· Visual appeal and appropriate aesthetics
· Design research category insights: usability, emotional factors, unmet needs, testing rigor and reliability
· Design strategy category: internal factors and methods, strategic value and implementation

Find all of the information at http://IDSA.org/IDEA, including the full rules and list of categories; check out last year's winners here.