Interested Australian universities with Interior Design/Interior Architecture degrees held an inaugural meeting in Sydney in 1996 to elicit interest in an association to advocate Interior Design/Interior Architecture education and research. In 1997 IDEA was formalised to encourage and support excellence in the discipline. This is the Inaugural publication of the annual ‘IDEA Referred Design Scheme’, one of the activities the IDEA committee promotes. Participating universities include: Curtin University of Technology, Queensland College of Art, Queensland University of Technology, Northern Territory University, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Swinburne University of Technology, University of New South Wales, University of South Australia and the University of Technology Sydney.