The Family Harm app has removed the need for a 13-page form to be filled out after every family harm incident. Police respond on average to 330 such cases every day.

A Christchurch technology company has taken out top design honours for an app helping New Zealand Police respond to family harm incidents.

Smudge Apps took out four awards at the Best Design Awards ceremony in Auckland on Saturday. All were for its app Family Harm, part of the OnDuty suite of technology it developed for Police.

Smudge Apps was started by school-friends Reuben Bijl and Toby Vincent, who began developing apps in 2008 during university holidays. They now create custom apps for corporate clients.

Smudge Smudge App developers Reuben Bijl, left, and Toby Vincent.

Before the app, police filled out a 13-page paper form for every incident they attended. In 2017, police responded to 121,000 cases of family harm, or an average of 331 each day.

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The app effectively replaced 1.5 million pages of paperwork per year, 500,000 hours of police time.

The app won a Gold Pin in the User Experience category, and a Purple Pin, the highest award available, in the Public Good category. In order to qualify for the purple pin, they already had to be awarded a Gold Pin in the same category.

Best Design Award judges said the app demonstrated a "strong design cycle with intensive user research and testing".

"Reducing the potential for harm to vulnerable citizens and streamlining processes at the same time is an absolute win-win technology for the community," the judges' comment said.

Acting Superintendent Bronwyn Marshall, who works in the "safer whānau" programme, said officers now had instant access to background information and context, as well as any family history relating to a family harm situation.

"This means staff can get right to the heart of continuing to help those in need, without needing to spend time on recording information," Marshall said.

"The information gathered at the scene helps generate...a frontline safety plan for victims and children. Information is also shared securely with partner agencies and NGOs...involved in providing longer-term family harm services for victims and offenders."

In difficult or sensitive situations, a "locked down" section of the app meant victims were able to communicate with Police without speaking. Currently available in English and Te Reo, Smudge and police hoped to also develop it into other languages.

In a statement, founders Bijl and Vincent said their relationship with NZ Police started in 2014 when they began designing OnDuty, an app to make frontline policing easier.

"The Smudge team spent hundreds of hours shadowing police across multiple towns and cities, and some of our team co-located to the Royal New Zealand Police College in Porirua," they said.