Design systems are still growing, and as such are a hotbed for innovation, whether that be in tooling, processes or org design. The category is a broad category that rewards innovation in the area of design systems.

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Criteria for Submission

  • The area that your submitting is out of the ordinary for design systems (eg. using design tokens probably won’t be enough for innovation!)
  • Serves a design system that caters to at least designers and engineers (eg. a UI Library by itself won’t cut it)
  • Having it be accessible and usable by design system consumers (ie. you need to have launched it!)
  • An active design system that has been updated at least once in the previous 6 months
  • The design system must belong to the submitter; it cannot belong to another company or person

Award for Innovation nominations are now closed

The nominations are now closed. Thank you to everyone who submitted their entries! We will be announcing the shortlist on Monday, September 15th and opening public voting at that time. Good luck to everyone!

Timeline

  1. Nominations will be open from Tuesday 13 May. If you have any questions about the nomination process, then check out the FAQs, or if your question isn't answered, please get in touch at community@zeroheight.com

    13 May, 2025

  2. Once the nominations are closed, we'll be collating the longlist and working through it to determine a shortlist. The shortlist will be determined by the team at zeroheight, and will be based on uniform judging criteria (which we will share in a month or two). With the shortlist creation, we aim to remove as much bias as possible and give everyone a fair chance across the board.

    22 August, 2025

  3. In September, the shortlist will be announced, including public voting! We'll notify all folks as to whether they made the shortlist. The judges will then individually judge each shortlisted entry. We'll also have public voting on each category live on the site!

    15 September, 2025

  4. Once all the judges and public votes are counted, we'll then be able to determine the winner for each category, based off a weighted compilation of votes.

    3 November, 2025

  5. In December, we'll gather the community together at an event in London to announce the winners live.

    December 10, 2025

Past Winners