This year we saw a variety of designers attempting to produce truly innovative footwear. Which they will increasingly need to do at a fast rate, since Counterfeit Sneakers are Now Manufactured So Well, Even Experts Can't Tell the Difference.

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What was most promising about this year's footwear innovations was not the sexiness factors, but the functional factors that can truly do some social good. In Inexpensive, Durable Shoes Designed to Grow Along with the Child, we saw Kenton Lee devise a useful pair of sandals that can span five sizes, a boon to children growing up in developing nations.

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In Nike Designs Sneakers for the Differently-Abled, we saw the footwear giant's FLYEASE entry system. Featuring a hinged rear, it makes it easier to don and doff for folks who have cerebral palsy or who have suffered from a stroke.

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This being 2015, Nike Came Through With "Back to the Future" Sneakers—and For a Good Cause. The company presented a pair of Nike Mags with the "power laces" feature seen in the movie to Michael J. Fox, and announced they're producing a limited run in 2016. All proceeds will go to the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research.

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This year designer Yasuyuki Yamada's Shock-Absorbing High Heels project made him a Dyson Award Finalist. Yamada's radical concept incorporates shock absorption into the heels, providing the height boost while minimizing the impact on the wearer's feet.

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Another footwear design with even more extreme shock absorption is Enko's Energy-Returning Running Shoes. The design looks awesome—only problem was, we couldn't tell if they were vaporware or not.

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Definitely not vaporware, and more extreme yet, were the Bird-Biology-Inspired Bionic Boots developed by Keahi Seymour. The man has been working on these for nearly two decades and has ample video of him running around in the ostrich-inspired prototypes.

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Going back to ordinary laced kicks, entrepreneur Charles Harris found he was sick of continually tying them. In This Little Widget Promises You'll Never Have to Tie Your Shoes Again, we got to see his Kickstarted doohickey that will allegedly solve the problem.

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When it comes to slippers, there's not a lot one can do to improve their function. So Nendo made them minimalist and geometric.

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Lastly, there was one piece of craziness, and the title of the entry says it all: Too Good to be True? Crowdfunded Sneakers Wrapped in Flexible Displays. These, we'll believe when we see them!

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More from Core77's 2015 Year in Review

• 15 of Your Favorite Posts from 2015

• The Coming Age of Automobility and What It Means for Designers

• 10 Clever, Innovative or Bizarre Design Processes from 2015

Material News You Can Use

• 10 Brilliant and Beautiful Objects from Our 'Designing Women' Series

• 12 Projects to Inspire Future Living

• Design Entrepreneurs Were Killing it in 2015

• The Year in Furniture Designs, Part 1: The Beautiful, the Innovative and the Unusual

• The Year in Furniture Designs, Part 2: Design/Build Techniques and Learning from the Past and Present

• 15 Tools and Tool-Based Projects We Loved in 2015

• 8 New Types of Digital Fabrication Machines

• 17 Random and Amazing Phenomena We Saw This Year

• The Best Product Design GIFs of 2015