We’re Finalists!

After years of hiding in the dark I’ve been recently making an effort to submit some of Provoke’s Design & User Experience work to industry publications and awards.

One we know we’ve already got ‘in the bag’ but can’t reveal what it is until early 2008. Two more sites we’d like to enter but they don’t go live until end of 2007. But I can announce that we have not one, but two sites as finalists in the 2007 TUANZ Business Internet Awards. 

These are both for the Information Architecture category. I expected we’d be up against industry moguls such as Shift and Clicksuite, who (unusually), are absent from this years list of finalists.

One of our entries is for the National Bank Home Buyers Centre. This was Bob Medcalf’s first big Information Architecture assignment and he overcame a series of challenges including designing an IA with no content! Despite this setback he followed a rigorous UCD process including personas and paper prototyping. Importantly he then validated and refined his architecture through usability testing.

The other Provoke entry is a prototype intranet we created for the Ministry of Transport (the first MOSS production intranet in the world). They liked it so much they rolled it out to all their staff… While they and I know it needs work, the clever Information Architecture is around the tag-driven content views. The navigation pathways are twistable, filterable and mashable!

Congratulations to the other TUANZ finalists. The preliminary judging "by a panel of independent industry experts" has taken place and the finalists in the Awards categories, are as follows:

Education Award

• Spell Right! Endings – Boost New Media
• Te Tuhi a-Hiko – Learning Media Ltd and Boost New Media
• ACC Sports Sites – DNA Design
• SciCity – Otago Museum and ZeDDD Technology

Advertising/Promotion Award

• grabaseat – Air New Zealand Limited
• QV iTV Campaign – Quotable Value
• Air Force Special Ops – Chrometoaster and Ogilvy

Entertainment Award

• MTV’s Jackass the Game – Sidhe Interactive
• GripShift for PlayStation 3 – Sidhe Interactive

Information Architecture Award

• Department of Conservation Website – Intergen
• Home Buyers Centre – Provoke Solutions
• MED SuperNav – Ministry of Economic Development
• Discover – Provoke Solutions

e-Commerce Award 

• QV iTV Campaign – Quotable Value
• The Air New Zealand ISIS online booking engine – Air New Zealand Limited
• Icebreaker.com – Flightless

Experimentation Award

• I KISS NZ – Kentaro Yamada + ALT
• How far can I go? – Air New Zealand Limited

User Generated Content Award 

• Ponoko – Origin Design
• Clever Toys Website – NV and Touch/Cast Next
• Share My NZ – Share My NZ Ltd/Zenago
• MTV’s Jackass the Game – Sidhe Interactive

SaaS Award 

• Xero – Xero Live Limited
• CNS Treasury Software – Tuatara Technology Ltd

Tertiary Student Award
All entries by students in any category were automatically considered for this award. 

• De Escape – Lin Yew Cheang, Wanganui School of Design
• Spinobot – Lin Yew Cheang, Wanganui School of Design
• Searchbots – Mark Zeman, Massey University

Winners in each category above and the special Awards listed below will be announced at a TUANZ Business Internet Awards event to be held at the Renouf Foyer, Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington Convention Centre commencing at 6:00pm on Wednesday 7 November. Registration details.