Enabling travellers to and from New Zealand during a global pandemic

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) needed a safe and reliable way to collect the details of an arriving passenger’s travel history, as well as COVID-19-related health information such as proof of vaccination and pre-departure test results.

MBIE approached Silverstripe to create an online information hub for the initiative, called the New Zealand Traveller Declaration. This online hub would be the gateway for national and international users to apply for a New Zealand Traveller Declaration.

Working closely with MBIE, we undertook wireframing, consultation, UI design, and web development to create a flexible set of templates and content blocks. As travelling during the pandemic brought extra complexities and stresses for passengers, the content on the website needed to be simple, easy to understand and accessible. 

The decisions made during the COVID-19 pandemic were done so without an existing blueprint. Within this environment, we followed an agile process to deliver this project quickly, with the best possible product, that could continue to be built on as requirements changed.

Building an information hub during a global pandemic required us to work efficiently to provide travellers with the information they needed, with simple navigation and layout. 

The New Zealand Traveller Declaration website had to be designed and built very quickly so the information would be available in time for the declaration to be launched to national and international travellers. It also had to be designed and built in a way that could easily be extended through following phases of work.

• Discovery workshops
• User experience design
• User interface design
• Project management
• User testing
• Web development
• Silverstripe CMS development
• Managed cloud hosting