The condom of the future might be made of cow tendon or fish skin. It might have “shape memory” to instantly mold to a specific man. Or it might come with pull tabs so a man could slip it on with little fuss.

Those ideas are among the winners announced Wednesday by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation of a contest to create a condom that men would actually use. The contest, the foundation said, aimed to decrease unintended pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases with “a next-generation condom that significantly preserves or enhances pleasure.”

The foundation received 812 applications, chose 11 and awarded the winners $100,000 each. They could receive up to $1 million after they develop the ideas. Steven Buchsbaum, a Gates Foundation official, said winners ranged from a longtime condom manufacturer in India to American chemical engineers to British design consultants whose previous work included vacuum cleaners.

Many ideas involved materials besides latex, aiming for thinner, stronger, less constricting condoms with better sensation, “reducing the loving distance between partners, so they will be more close,” said Dr. Papa Salif Sow, a Gates senior program officer. Other ideas focused on “how to improve the donning,” he said, because “in sub-Saharan Africa, sex is basically done with low light and it might be very difficult to see the direction of the condom.”