Design Foundations Round 6

Overview

Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation, will invest up to £2 million in innovation projects that use people centred and systemic design methods. These will be to influence, inform and de-risk their future research and development (R&D) activity.

Scope

The aim of this competition is to help businesses use people centred and systemic design methods. These will lay foundations for innovative ideas that can deliver significant benefits to people, the planet and society as a whole. The ideas can be for new or significantly improved products, services, places or business models.

To be within scope of this competition, your proposal must be one or more of the following three categories:

Defining innovation opportunities: You will use people centred and systemic design methods to identify, understand and prioritise needs and innovation opportunities that are relevant and valuable to your business. You will plan design led innovation activity to address these opportunities, including generating, testing and improving new ideas.
Generating new ideas: You have identified a specific need or opportunity and will use design methods to verify it, then generate and develop new or improved ideas in response.
Improving existing innovative ideas: You have an innovative idea and will use design methods to simulate, test, and validate it, enhancing its quality and the benefits it provides throughout its lifecycle.

Your project must explore opportunities and ideas from the perspective of key stakeholders involved with or affected by them.

This may include:

people
organisations
communities
the planet

You must consider their:

experiences
motivations
behaviours

You must also consider the technical, social and environmental factors that influence or are influenced by your solution. These insights must guide your approach to challenges and idea development.

Your project must engage relevant stakeholders early and at appropriate stages to ensure:

the most important and valuable problems and opportunities are prioritised
that proposed solutions are more desirable, beneficial, and responsible
that new ideas are more likely to be adopted and promote positive changes in behaviour

All projects must apply design methods that support responsible innovation. This involves creating solutions that are ethically sound, sustainable and socially desirable, while anticipating unintended consequences.

Design approaches can be used to explore how innovation within your specific business context can be undertaken responsibly.

Your project team can reflect the characteristics, culture and lived experiences of the people they are designing for, or take steps to bring those perspectives permanently into the project.

All prototyping activity within your project must:

focus primarily on making discoveries about the quality of experience, the likelihood of the idea being adopted or its potential to promote positive changes in behaviour
be as quick and low cost as possible, and aim for the lowest level of fidelity and functionality necessary to get the required feedback
be used to share ideas and make discoveries early in the design process, so they can be acted on before it becomes too expensive or time consuming to do so

During your project you will be encouraged to respond to feedback and new discoveries made during the research and design process. This may lead to changing, rethinking or adapting your original ideas, or shifting the focus of your planned R&D activities.

Innovate UK will consider justified project change requests where it does not change the original project scope.

Portfolio approach

Innovate UK want to fund a variety of projects across different themes, sectors, outputs, location, design applications and range of company size. Innovate UK call this a portfolio approach.

Innovate UK reserve the right to select a portfolio of successful applicants based on these criterion.

Specific Themes

Your project can focus on one or more of the following:

net zero
artificial intelligence and machine learning
other emerging or advanced digital technologies
health and wellbeing
food and agriculture (except primary production)

This list is not exhaustive.

Eligibility

Your project must:

have a grant funding request of between £40,000 and £80,000
have a grant funding request that matches your total project costs
last between three and six months
carry out its project work in the UK
intend to exploit the results from or in the UK
start by 1 June 2025
end by 30 November 2025

Projects must always start on the first of the month, even if this is a non-working day. You must not start your project until your Grant Offer Letter has been approved by Innovate UK. Any delays within Project Setup may mean we need to delay your project start date.

You must only include eligible project costs in your application. See our overview of eligible project costs. For specific guidance, see the eligibility section in this competition.

You will be made ineligible if you exceed the Minimal Financial Assistance limit. You must submit a complete declaration as part of your application.

Lead organisation

To lead a project your organisation must:

be a UK registered business of any size
collaborate with at least one other grant claiming UK registered organisation

Lead organisations must agree to contribute a minimum of one day and up to two days, in support of Innovate UK activities.

These activities are to promote the use of design in business innovation, or to help improve products and services.

This activity can include:

taking part in interviews
supporting the creation of case studies
contributing to seminars or showcases

You will not be required to share confidential information or intellectual property.

Project team

To collaborate with the lead, your organisation must be a UK registered:

business of any size
academic institution
charity
not for profit
public sector organisation
research and technology organisation (RTO)

Your project team must include appropriate expertise in people centred and systemic design. Lead organisations without this capability are encouraged to work with designers as project partners or subcontractors.

Each partner organisation must be invited into the Innovation Funding Service (IFS) by the lead to collaborate on a project. Once partners have accepted the invitation, they will be asked to login or to create an account in IFS. They are responsible for entering their own project costs and completing their Project Impact questions in the application.

To be an eligible collaboration, the lead and at least one other organisation must apply for funding when entering their costs into the application.

Subcontractors

Subcontractors are allowed in this competition, but they are limited to no more than 80% of the total eligible costs.

You can work with multiple subcontractors on your project. Each subcontractor must be named on the application form with a unique and clearly defined role within the project.

Subcontractors can be from anywhere in the UK and you must select them through your usual procurement process.

You can use subcontractors from overseas but must make the case in your application as to why you cannot use suppliers from the UK.

You must also provide a detailed rationale, evidence of the potential UK contractors you approached and the reasons why they were unable to work with you.

Innovate UK expect all subcontractor costs to be justified and appropriate to the total eligible project costs. Innovate UK will not accept a cheaper cost as a sufficient reason to use an overseas subcontractor.

Number of applications

A business of any size can only lead on one application but can be included as a collaborator in two further applications.

An organisation that is not leading any application, can collaborate on any number of applications.

Sanctions

This competition will not fund you, or provide any financial benefit to any individual or entities directly or indirectly involved with you, which would expose Innovate UK or any direct or indirect beneficiary of funding from Innovate UK to UK Sanctions. For example, through any procurement, commercial, business development or supply chain activity with any entity as lead, partner or subcontractor related to these countries, administrations and terrorist groups.

Use of animals in research and innovation

Innovate UK expects and supports the provision and safeguarding of welfare standards for animals used in research and innovation, according to best practice and up to date guidance.

Any projects selected for funding which involve animals will be asked to provide additional information on welfare and ethical considerations, as well as compliance with any relevant legislation as part of the project start-up process. This information will be reviewed before an award is made.

You can use a previously submitted application to apply for this competition.

Exclusions

Innovate UK are not funding projects that:

are the design of experiments, policies or research methodologies
do not follow best practice design methods and principles as described in the competition scope
focus on the final finish or specification of an idea where fundamental design decisions have already been made, for example, where new customer feedback or discoveries will have little influence on the design outcome
seek only to validate technical feasibility or progress the technology readiness level of an idea, rather than improving the quality of the experience or its benefits for people or the planet
are likely to be harmful to people or the planet
are proposals to create prototypes or demonstrators, in cases where the prototype requires a majority of the project cost or time to build
is a demonstration to be made fully functional at considerable effort or cost when partial or simulated functionality would suffice
is a demonstration intended primarily to test technical feasibility or performance rather than the customer experience and benefits
will only be shared with stakeholders late in the project, for example, with no time allowed to make changes in response to feedback

Innovate UK cannot fund projects that:

involve primary production in fishery and aquaculture
involve primary production in agriculture
have activities relating to the purchase of road freight transport
are not allowed under De minimis regulation restrictions
are not eligible to receive Minimal Financial Assistance
are dependent on export performance, for example, giving an award to a baker on the condition that they export a certain quantity of bread to another country
are dependent on domestic inputs usage, for example, if we give an award to a baker on the condition that they use 50% UK flour in their product

Funding Costs

Innovate UK have allocated up to £2 million to fund innovation projects in this competition.

Your total project costs will be 100% funded. Total grant funding request and total project costs, detailed within your application, must not exceed the maximum project size of £80,000. If your total project costs do exceed the maximum, then your application will be made ineligible.

You can make reference to any additional voluntary contribution in your application answers. It must not be detailed in the finance section.

Research participation

The research organisations undertaking non-economic activity as part of the project can share up to 80% of the total eligible project costs. If your consortium contains more than one research organisation undertaking non-economic activity, this maximum is shared between them. Of that 80% you can get funding for your eligible project costs of up to:

80% of full economic costs (FEC) if you are a Je-S registered institution such as an academic
100% of your eligible project costs if you are an RTO, charity, not for profit organisation, public sector organisation or research organisation

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