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This year sees PaperKite as a Wellington region Gold Awards finalist for not just one award, but two! We couldn’t be more delighted to be selected as finalists for the Cyber Gold category, and our contact tracing app, Rippl, has been selected as a finalist for the Innovation Gold category. We’re no stranger to the Gold Awards, having won the Emerging Gold back in 2015.
The Cyber Gold category honours technology creators, something we know a thing or two about. Since 2010, we’ve been at the forefront of creating digital solutions and experiences to everyday human problems. The early days saw us working on apps for the All Blacks and Metservice, and creating Apple Watch software. More recent projects have been app development for BP New Zealand, and working on digital experiences for the customers of Countdown, Coca-Cola Amatil and Hell Pizza.
The world-changing COVID-19 pandemic saw us need to react quickly and take stock of how we could support the New Zealand response, and local Wellington business. Our response was Rippl – a privacy-first contact tracing product that was designed and released within an impressive 3 weeks.
As technology creators, we’re seen as trusted advisors for the clients we work with. In a rapidly changing digital environment, our human-centred research and design focus, and proven product development see us well-placed to continue to support businesses wanting to create better digital experiences for their customers.
How do we support the businesses we work with? We approach digital projects in many different ways. Sometimes our clients will need support with just one of the below aspects, and sometimes they will join us on all stages of their digital journey.This year sees PaperKite as a Wellington region Gold Awards finalist for not just one award, but two!
Our PaperKite IGNITE discovery workshops are the cornerstone of discovering the ‘why’ for clients. The results of this research and discovery process help us create superior digital experiences for our clients again and again.
We’re well known for creating native App solutions, but our technical team are no strangers to creating other types of digital experiences and digital customer interactions too.
As leaders of digital experience, we have a keen interest in exploring new tech and seeing how we can leverage this to support our client’s goals. From conversational UX, AI assistants, smart speakers and AR/VR – we consider innovative ways to integrate the latest technology trends into the brand experiences we deliver for our customers.
Our people-first focus here at PaperKite means that we attract and retain the best talent in Wellington. Our People & Culture lead now sits within our Senior Leadership Team, showing our team just how important people are in the ongoing success of our business.
The year of the pandemic has also been the year of the big move. Moving from our Edward St space to NEC House on Taranaki St has increased our office space by 30%, allowing for our expanding team and all important meeting room and breakout spaces so our team have the space to do their best work.
This year has been a year of uncertainty. COVID-19 has made us more proactive in our client relationships and support of our team. We’re in the fortunate position of being able to support our clients in a rapidly changing digital environment, and provide technical solutions such as contactless delivery.
A strong focus for us over the coming months will be to support our clients with their user research and discovery projects and using technology solutions such as chatbots and other voice technology to adapt to our ever changing world. We look forward to continuing to serve as leading technology creators in the Wellington region and beyond.
Meanwhile, the Innovation Gold category celebrates local R&D projects. Rippl was an unexpected product build for us this year, with the NZ wide lockdown in March serving as the catalyst to experiment with a contact tracing solution for NZ businesses.
Our main motivation was to get local businesses back on their feet, and quickly. The need was certainly there at the time – reassurance was needed for the general public that a simple to use privacy-first contact tracing app was available, and business venues all over the country jumped on board very quickly, as Rippl enabled them to meet strict government requirements for reopening post-lockdown. Speed to market was key to our success too. Within 3 weeks we took Rippl from concept to release.
Working with Posboss, the Ministry of Health and local councils (Wellington & Dunedin), our check-in and alerting app was awarded the Privacy Trust Mark, a hugely important factor in it’s take up. With thousands of businesses using Rippl across NZ, and more than 80,000 app downloads, we’re delighted to have done our bit towards fighting the pandemic.
Rippl is a contactless app solution with a built-in scanner to check in and out of venues by scanning the venue’s QR code. User data is anonymous and encrypted, with government health services having no knowledge of a user’s personal details. If a COVID-19 link to a venue is confirmed, health officials have the ability to contact Rippl users through the app.
The user experience was critical for our team – it needed to be ridiculously simple to use, contactless and secure. The result is a privacy-first scan and go model, that has gained interest from international organisations looking to take the technology to manage their own pandemic crises.
We consider data as taonga and have worked hard to align with Treaty guidelines for the use of Maori data. The privacy-first approach was the first step in meeting these obligations, as was ensuring data remained in NZ.
We’re looking forward to continuing to support NZ’s fight against the pandemic, and continuing discussions with international organisations about supporting their pandemic solutions.
We’re also looking forward to attending the Wellington Gold Awards dinner on 22 October, for a well deserved celebration of a challenging, but rewarding year.
New digital project? Keep to optimise your existing mobile app? We’re always keen to talk.
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