Waikato Business News October/November 2022

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4 WAIKATO BUSINESS NEWS, OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2022 Entries open for the 2023 Waipa Business Awards The Waipa Networks Business Awards Gala is back again for 2023. Entries for the prestigious awards close on Wednesday 15 February, 2023. Our team All entries received are judged by an independent judging panel of experienced industry professionals and Waikato University representatives. There is always a diverse range of businesses which enter the awards from new and emerging, small, medium and large businesses. Each are judged on their own merit across the range of award categories available. The awards evening celebrating the 2023 finalists and local Waipa business Liz Stolwyk achievement, is set to take place at Mystery Creek Events Centre on Friday 21 April, 2023 and is sure to be an event not to be missed! “Waipa Networks is proud to continue our long-standing support as the Platinum Sponsor of the awards. It’s great to be part of an event that recognises and rewards excellence within our local business community” CEO of Waipa Networks Sean Horgan says. Joining the awards for Jason Tiller 2023 are the newly appointed Waipa Networks Business Awards Ambassadors including deputy mayor and Waipa District councillor - Liz Stolwyk and Jason Tiller from our 2021 supreme award winner - Rocketspark. Cambridge Chamber CEO Kelly Bouzaid says it has been incredible to hear the stories of innovation, adaptability, resilience, and growth that have continued to happen despite the challenges in recent years. “We believe that it is more important than ever to acknowledge our district’s businesses achievements and continue to inspire each other to continue to be one of the most diverse and innovative business communities in the country.” “The awards are an opportunity for Waipa businesses to celebrate their efforts, drive and determination as well as their contribution to our communities,” Te Awamutu Business Chamber CEO Shane Walsh says. For more information and entry details for the 2023 Waipa Networks Awards please visit www.waipabusinessawards.co.nz or contact the Cambridge Business Chamber on 07 823 3460. DESIGNER Ellie Neben ellie@dpmedia. co.nz EDITORIAL Janine Jackson editor@dpmedia. co.nz ADVERTISING MANAGER Joanne Poole Ph: (07) 838 1333 Mob: (021) 507 991 joanne@dpmedia.co.nz PUBLISHER Deidre Morris Ph: (07) 838 1333 Mob: 027 228 8442 deidre@dpmedia.co.nz STUDIO Copy/Proofs: studio@dpmedia.co.nz SUBSCRIPTIONS accounts@dpmedia.co.nz 2/1 Riro Street, Hamilton Ph: (07) 838 1333 www.wbn.co.nz - www.dpmedia.co.nz DESIGN Process, mechanical and environmental solutions PROJECT MANAGEMENT From concept to completion CONSTRUCTION Where drawings turn into a physical structure COMMISSIONING Your end-to-end project specialist +64 7 849 1638 info@vertex.co.nz vertex.co.nz
User experience experts helped Hamilton City Council understand its audience. Hamilton City Council asked Company-X to help design the user experience (UX) for new and upgraded content. As part of a larger city-wide update of the Hamilton City council website, Company-X was asked to help design the user experience (UX) for new and upgraded content supporting its Growth Funding and Analytics unit. There was a lot of ‘what if’ and ‘how can we’ during the work with Luke and Cory “We looked for help putting ourselves in the shoes of our users,” said Unit Manager Greg Carstens. This included understanding what outputs and information would be most impactful to each user group, specifically relating to growth data, economic analytics, and economic development. The Council wanted to ensure that the user experience was optimised for a unique audience that was both internal and external to the organisation. Carstens and his leadership team needed a solution that provided data to elected members and senior staff, but also helped to educate a diverse collection of external partners about Hamilton’s economic performance and investment opportunities. Most importantly, the team wanted to ensure that datadriven insights, trends, and projections could be shared to support increasingly complex decisions. Company-X software architect and senior developer Luke McGregor and senior user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) developer Cory McKenzie held several workshops with the Council’s Growth Funding and Analytics leaders to understand the aims and objectives of the website. Their previous experience on other heavily UX-reliant projects benefitted the council. “There was a lot of ‘what if’ and ‘how can we’ during the work with Luke and Cory. It was genuinely like a greenfield project, starting from the bottom and building up,” Carstens said. McGregor and McKenzie developed eight personas for WAIKATO BUSINESS NEWS, OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2022 5 Users first approach drives great user experience whom they would design the website user experience for. The personas included an elected member, managing director, management accountant, planning consultant, two property developers and a senior Government official. This exercise helped understand the types of goals and challenges of each user. “The idea was we had one persona per each different category of people the council thought were going to go use the site,” McGregor said. “They have significant amounts of data and analytics within their systems, and they wanted to ensure that it was available and accessible to the public. A key goal was to provide ways to highlight insights that are linked back to core data, all with different elements that would be useful to each persona.” “Based on those personas, we created a high-level journey map that provided insights into what pages would be on the site,” McKenzie said. “What are the individual elements throughout the site, and what supports the distinct ways that each persona might interact with them?” The research led to the creation of a user experience design with McKenzie creating conceptual designs for the council’s web team to build. Not every persona was included in the end design, some EXPERIENCED - Cory McKenzie, left, and Luke McGregor were encouraged to use the website as a contact point to request the data they needed. “The attributes that you want to resonate with the internal audience were night and day different from the external audience,” Carstens said. “But from the start, we knew we didn’t want a site that split users into two distinct groups with Path A and Path B. We wanted it to be one integrated site because an external audience quickly shares a lot of the needs of an internal audience.” Another important goal was to quickly educate users who might initially come to the site with an outdated or uninformed view of Hamilton’s economy. Council Economic Development Manager Mike Bennett said “once users learn who our largest employers are, we want to make it easy for them to dig deeper and understand which key sectors are behind our growth. It’s also important to show how Hamilton is part of a region that is economically diverse but highly integrated. The challenge is to use complex data to generate useful insights, and then deliver it in an authentic and engaging way.” Company-X’s work also provided the Growth Funding and Analytics team with clarity around customer prioritisation and the power of search. “There was a recognition of how important it is to ensure high-volume users can quickly get what they know they need, while new users can seek out something they might not even initially realise is there,” said Carstens. “Cory and the team really helped us understand how powerful search is. If done well, it can transform an average site into a critical tool.” Hamilton City council’s Growth Funding and Analytics team gained a deeper understanding of how to balance the relationship between data and information and address the needs of a diverse set of users in a web-based environment. 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Waikato Business News October/November 2022

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