Research & Strategy
Research & Strategy
Research & StrategyYour website is your face to the world and your hardest-working sales rep.
Shift designs world-class, elegant websites that reflect who you are and who you want to reach. They’re also famously easy to use.
Shift can:
- design truly unique websites that offer satisfying user experiences
- create standards compliant sites that don’t sacrifice style and creativity
- design sites that connect at an emotional level, engaging and inspiring users
- facilitate easy access to current information to support your business.
Award winning web design
Year after year, Shift designs are recognised with international and national awards. The accolades are affirming but we are not content to rest on past successes. We constantly strive to explore what is possible online.
The awards we’ve won also reflect well on our clients. They are showing New Zealand and the world their commitment to creating innovative, world-leading online experiences for their customers.
Recent awards include:
- Webby Awards 2005 and 2006 For Newzealand.com. The Webbys are hailed as the ‘Online Oscars’ and recognise web design excellence.
- NetGuide Awards 2006 For the redesigned Inland Revenue site.
- 2006 Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA) Awards for Tourism A gold award for our work on New Zealand’s travel trade online training modules.
- TUANZ Awards 2005 Two wins and four finalists.
- BEST Awards 2005
An interactivity award for Te Ara, New Zealand’s online encyclopedia. The BEST Awards are organised by the Designers Institute of New Zealand.
Awards are an important measure of success but we also value more grass-roots forms of design recognition. Sometimes the most rewarding are the out-of-the-blue emails we get from people telling us how much they enjoy using Shift-designed sites. That’s what it’s all about for us: satisfied web users.
The value of user-focused design
At Shift the design of a new website always begins with in-depth research into the people who will be using the site. Our designers work alongside researchers, information architects, usability specialists and developers to build this picture. The whole team knows who we are designing for and what they want to do online.
The real art of effective web design is in finding the perfect balance between what the users want, and technical, functional and aesthetic considerations.
Our designers are adept at turning increasingly complex ‘back ends’ into increasingly simple user interfaces.
When it comes to the user experience, we know simpler is always better. We have a rigorous testing process to ensure that our sites live up this expectation.
The design process
Prototyping is central to the Shift design process. We use a range of methods from the early concept stage through to launch. By the time we’re creating the final templates the look and feel has been exhaustively tested and all options explored.
Techniques such as low-fidelity prototyping allow for quick testing and refining of early concepts. This often involves good old paper prototyping - a simple but highly effective way of isolating fundamental design issues.
Site maps, HTML wire frames and page schematics are used at later stages to further test and refine the design.
As in traditional advertising, mood boards help to work up the site’s visual branding. Interface mock-ups come later, bringing together the look and feel, site architecture and functionality.
Built into Shift’s structured and systematic design process is plenty of scope for the exploration of new ideas and creativity that our work is known for.