Press Release
Grafa Finance Information App by Heidi Cuthbert Is Granted the Bronze A' Design Award in Mobile Technologies, Applications and Software Design
Heidi Cuthbert acknowledged for mobile technologies, applications and software design by the international grand jury of the 2020 - 2021 A' Design Award & Competition
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
COMO, Italy, April 23, 2021 /DesignNewswire/ A' Design Award & Competition has announced that Grafa Finance Information App by Heidi Cuthbert, designed for Grafa, has been granted the Bronze A' Design Award in the Mobile Technologies, Applications and Software Design category. The award was conferred within the 2020 - 2021 A' Design Award & Competition and was determined through blind peer review by an international grand jury panel of established academics, design professionals and press members, who assessed anonymized entries against predetermined criteria.
About the Bronze A' Design Award
The Bronze A' Design Award is given to outstanding designs that showcase a high degree of creativity and practicality. It recognizes the dedication and skill of designers who produce work that stands out for its thoughtful development and innovative use of materials and technology. These designs are acknowledged for their professional execution and potential to influence industry standards positively. Winning this award highlights the designer's ability to blend form and function effectively, offering solutions that enhance people's lives and wellbeing.
More About Grafa Finance Information App
Grafa is a mobile application for financial data, news and analysis. The application gives users access to large volumes of information quickly. Video news curated by artificial intelligence is combined with articles written by data analysts and business journalists. Users can chart multi-asset data sets that include Australian stocks, global currencies and cryptocurrencies. A dark navy background with light blue highlights creates a clean and calm reading experience. The interface is built in HTML and adapts to many screen sizes on Android and Apple devices.
About Heidi Cuthbert
Heidi is a financial news specialist and former TV anchor for Bloomberg Television in the Asia Pacific and Middle East regions. She has more than 15 years experience working in business and financial news, generating content for financial publications including Wall Street Journal, Sky News, CNN, CNBC and Forbes. Heidi was previously the Corporate Communications Manager for DAMAC Properties in Dubai - which was named by Forbes as the fastest growing company in the world. Heidi has an MBA and a Graduate Certificate in Finance. She currently consults to a range of companies from ASX Top 200 companies to fast growing start-ups and cryptocurrency companies.
Award Record
With this recognition, Heidi Cuthbert is a winner of 1 A' Design Award.
About the A' Mobile Technologies, Applications and Software Design Award
The A' Mobile Design Award is an international design competition recognizing good design in mobile industry by leading designers and brands worldwide. The competition is organized within the A' Design Award & Competition and is open to mobile designers, application developers, software engineers and user interface designers from all countries. Entries typically include smartphones, tablets, wearables, mobile applications, mobile games and mobile software. Awarded mobile designs are published at https://designers.org/design-category/mobile
About A' Design Award & Competition
A' Design Award & Competition is an international, juried design accolade organized annually since 2008. The competition is open to entries from all countries. The A' Design Award has a philanthropic mission to advance society through good design by recognizing and promoting superior products, projects and services that benefit society, and by creating a global awareness and appreciation for good design practices and principles. Entries are peer reviewed and anonymously evaluated by an international grand jury panel of established academics, design professionals and press members against predetermined criteria such as functionality, ergonomics, engineering, presentation, innovation, usability, sustainability and technology, with score normalization applied to remove biases. Awards are conferred at Platinum, Gold, Silver, Bronze and Iron levels. The A' Design Prize granted to eligible laureates includes the award trophy, the certificate of design excellence, the hardcover yearbook, a lifetime license to use the A' Design Award winner logo, exhibition of awarded works, an invitation to the gala night and award ceremony in Italy, inclusion in the World Design Rankings and Designer Rankings, and public relations and publicity services. Registration, the upload of a work and the preliminary score are free of charge, and Professional and Digital Edition laureates are not contractually obliged to pay further fees to claim the A' Design Prize. Further information is available at https://competition.adesignaward.com
Press Resources
- Winner Page: https://designers.org/124853
- A' Design Award Page: https://competition.adesignaward.com/124853
- Media Showcase: https://www.designnewsroom.com/!124853
- Laureate Profile: https://designers.org/d/306561
- Further Information from the Laureate: http://www.grafa.io/
Media Contact
Giulia Ferrari, Press Office
Designers.Org
Via Leone Leoni 32, 22100 Como, Italy
press@designers.org
+39 031 4491953
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Fact Sheet
The Work
- Project
- Grafa Finance Information App
- Function
- Finance Information App
- Category
- Mobile Technologies, Applications and Software Design
- Discipline
- Communication Design
- Industry
- Software and Electronics & Appliances
- Colors
- Black, Dark Slate Gray, Gray, Dim Gray and Gainsboro
- Images
- 5
- Client
- Grafa
The Recognition
- Laureate
- Heidi Cuthbert
- Country
- Australia
- Recognition
- Bronze A' Design Award
- Edition
- 2020 - 2021
- Design ID
- #124853
Credits
- Team
- Heidi Cuthbert - Co-founder, Jon Cuthbert - Co-founder, Dan Petrie - Co-founder, Mikey Couch - UX designer and Tim Huegdon - Chief Technology Officer
- Image Credits
- All content owned by Grafa.
Design Details
- Unique Properties
- Grafa is a financial data, news and analysis platform that gives users access to large volumes of information quickly and in a way that is entertaining and engaging. The platform integrates AI-curated video news from Bloomberg, Reuters, Cheddar TV, in addition to news generated by Grafa’s team of data analysts and business journalists. Grafa allows users to track the trends and be ahead of the curve with multi-asset data sets including Australian stocks, global currencies and cryptocurrencies
- Inspiration
- The inspiration for Grafa’s design was from the single premise that finance needed to entertain to achieve mass adoption. We used dark navy as the main app background, with light blue highlights which helps boost alertness, heighten reaction times and elevate moods. The app design needed to be clean, seamless and give the impression that no expense had been spared. In a genre in which good design is an afterthought, we wanted Grafa to be known for making finance beautiful.
- Research
- Grafa researched its direct competitors, such as Bloomberg, Yahoo Finance, Reuters and TradingView as well as other software-as-a-service companies including Canva, Redditt and Netflix. It also drew inspiration from Apple, which was able to distinguish itself for good design across its entire product suite. The design considered psychology, published interviews by the CEOs of competitors and extensive user testing. Given the main premise was to be entertaining, the darker background colours of the app were to give the appearance the user was watching television.
- Challenge
- The biggest challenge has been the balance between design and speed. We found an almost direct trade off between the detail of the design and the load times of the app. We needed to rebuild the front end in a simpler format to be able to achieve the level and sophistication of design that we wanted, without sacrificing speed. While we had a beautiful product at our soft launch, the beauty gives way to frustration if the app takes too long to load. It took time and patience, but we have now managed to achieve both and are ready for rapid, global scale.
- Realization and Technology
- The UX design of Grafa was developed using Adobe’s XD product and the front-end of the app was originally built in React Native, but later re-built in HTML. The app has been built on the AWS cloud infrastructure, which allows for rapid and global scale. The app is now available on the App Store and Google Play.
- Operation and Interaction
- Grafa allows users to chart multi-asset data sets, and uses advanced search functionality and AI-curation to search/curate/organise enormous volumes of data, news, video and analysis within milliseconds. The infinite scrolling functionality of social media platforms like Facebook have been incorporated into the Grafa app. This technology has proven to be habit forming. This keeps users looking at their phones for far longer than necessary - it was originally based on the mechanics of slot machines.
- Project Duration and Location
- Grafa started in Australia in 2019, and the first release of the app was in November 2020. The app gained a small user base, the feedback was that the app needed to improve its load speed. This feedback prompted a redesign and rebuild of the front-end of the app and this was launched in April 2021. User feedback is that the current product exceeds expectations and has the potential for global scale.
- Specifications
- The design is an HTML file that is wrapped into an app so that it scales for any Android or Apple device. It’s adaptable to many different resolutions and kinds of screens. Its ability to adapt to the endless number of different terminals on the market is excellent. It supports HTML, HTML5, amongst others. It’s capable of genuinely multitasking between applications.
- Keywords
- fintech, finance, charting, finance content
