ZAGREB, May 1, 2020. – The International Academy of Digital Arts & Sciences (IADAS) today announced the Nominees for The 24th Annual Webby Awards dubbed “Webbys From Home” by event organizers. Webby is internationally recognized as one of the most prestigious internet awards. Usually held in New York, due to the unfortunate current circumstances this year's final ceremony will be held as a “WFH: Webbys From Home” online event. “The Internet is our glue right now. It’s the most powerful tool for us to support and uplift one another, and it is no surprise that this year’s Nominees are the companies and people leading the charge”, said Claire Graves, Executive Director of The Webby Awards.

Academy’s six criteria of excellence

This year's final will be peculiar though, with the Croatian agency Human entering the realm of major digital players. Human is the finalist of this year’s Best practice category with its own humaninteraction.com website. The site is a different kind of beast. To say the least. Direct and informal language, lively photography and videography, even the traditionally yawn-inducing privacy policy (it sure induces no yawns in Human’s case) acquired the attention of the international IADAS jury, comprised of the world’s leading digital experts.

Best practices category is one of the toughest around as it in fact set the industry standard for innovation and advanced practices in website production. Entries have to excel in all six areas scrutinized by the jury: content, structure, navigation, visual design, interactivity, functionality, and overall experience. And so the Human website finds itself in the final, among the likes of Google and Dutch national air-carrier KLM.

Finals of other categories are comprised of many other renowned brands like HBO, NASA, Spotify, Saturday Night Live, BBC, Lego, UNICEF, as well as notable individuals: Leonardo DiCaprio, Idris Elba, Wiz Khalifa, Serena Williams and Tom Hanks, all of whom have in the eyes of the jury contributed to the development of the internet during the last 12 months.

Apart from the jury awards, all entrants are also participating in the Webby People’s Voice, and this is where you can help our Human. The voting is held online, via this link, and the polls are open until May 7th 2020.  The winners of the 24th Webby Awards and Webby People’s Voice will be announced on May 27th.

A regionally renowned agency

Human agency is a household name in the regional digital scene. Their projects just keep on winning awards both regionally and internationally. Human has been producing digital solutions for the past 19 years now, and it’s been very good at it. The last accolade came two weeks ago for their own website humaninteraction.com that won the MIXX award for Croatia’s best website. It is an internationally accredited competition held as part of the 'Dani Komunikacija' event. This is the eight MIXX for Human now, out of a total of ten possible. Quite a record that says a lot about their expertise.

The winning formula relies on understanding the big picture, focusing on the end-user and project results. To sum it up, Human churns out products that make both clients and user go: “wow, this was cool”.

October 14, 2019 - Lovie Awards is the most prestigious honour in Europe for excellence across websites, online advertising, internet video, mobile sites, apps & podcasts and social. It’s the European sister of the global Webby Awards.

Human website has been selected as the winner of Best Practices category, both by jury and by people’s vote at the annual Lovie Awards.

Best practices winners represent an industry benchmark for the most current, innovative and advanced practices in web development. They demonstrate unparalleled excellence across The Academy’s six criteria: content, structure and  navigation, visual design, interactivity, functionality, and overall experience.

“This is a great honour for us. We’ve put a lot of love and effort into both our recent rebranding and production of this website. We’ve always believed in our direction, messages, aesthetics, jokes, all of it - but you can never be really sure. Awards like this confirm that it all made sense, that our beliefs were not false. Thanks Lovie!” - Vanja Bertalan, Human CEO

Why did we win?

We cannot be sure, obviously - but we have a couple of ideas. Content-first - A fine line between business and humor.

Our website is an extension of ourselves, it speaks the same way we speak. Simple sentences with a clear point of view, informative and useful with a bit of silly mixed in. Because everything's better with a bit of silly.

Structure - Bringing User Experience.

We guide the visitors through a carefully planned narrative which combines funny moments, our business perspective and our culture. Also, we’ve reduced their cognitive load by suggesting just a single “next in line” content item to read next, eliminating paradox of choice.

Design direction

Our visual language was created using simple elements that don’t distract but rather make the experience smoother, steering the visitor from one piece of content to the next. Also, we did all the copywriting, photo and video production ourselves. It's been quite a journey.PerformanceSpeed is a major factor for a great user experience.

We optimized our code and infrastructure to get the best load times possible. As a result, most of the pages get a top score on Google Lighthouse and 5 A’s on Web Page Test.Cookies.

We gave out cookies to all people that visited our privacy page, read all of it and sent us an email. It’s not your regulary privacy page, check it out.In-line with our strategy.

Lovie Awards had 1,500 entries this year, from 33 countries, and over 55,000 votes in the People’s Lovie Awards.“International expansion is our #1 strategic goal. We’ve been getting local recognition for some years now. It’s wonderful to get this kind of broader recognition for our work. It puts us on a global map, and is totally in-line with our strategy.” - Ivana Božanić, Human COO.

Human is one of the biggest and best known Croatian digital agencies. They create digital products that make interactions between humans and computers a joy, and drive value for clients. Their service portfolio includes strategy, user experience, design, content production and development. They have been around for over 18 years and won MIXX Award for the Best Website in Croatia 6 years in a row.

You can learn more about Human's award-winning website by visiting it here.