A data visualisation solution for small business to compare themselves against other businesses
The challenge
How can we help small business owners to easily compare how their business is tracking across a range of performance indicators compared to other similar businesses?
The team chose this after looking at the available data. They found that they could find things like locations that might be good to open a new business because the area is not already saturated. Profit data was available to indicate good places for small businesses.
The solution
“We started building an actual API. Paul put about eight hours into it, before accepting that it just wasn’t going to get done.”
Team mate Milan, an Excel genius, created amazing spatial maps. Andrew created all the imagery. “There’s no actual POC (proof of concept), it’s all mock”. User interfaces, that actually work, were built in Figma.
The team
The Nightwatch team existed before GovHack. It was a group of five that went through uni together. Only Andrew was available for the GovHack weekend but it was a strong core. One of the uni team works for ABS and so was not eligible for GovHack. Milan is a product manager at Paul’s work.
The weekend
The team came up with the idea before the weekend started. On Friday they got the datasets and challenges and started reviewing them as suitable.
“We had about an hour of chat and thought – this looks cool – let’s do this!”
Saturday started at about 9am but Milan had a childcare problem and wasn’t available until about 4pm. Andrew and Paul tried to make a proof of concept in React. “Totally wasted too much time on that”. At that point they switched to Figma to make a mockup.
On Sunday afternoon the slideshow video was started in a tiny corner of the hackerspace.
Advice to new competitors
“I wouldn’t necessarily try to make an application that works – I would purely use Figma or Miro or Invision or one of those prototyping apps”.
Figma lets you build a prototype and actually run it on your phone.
“Choose a data set that you have an interest in, because if you’re interested in it, that’s where you’re going to find gold”.
“It was a fun weekend. I really enjoyed talking to the other teams, the sponsors and mentors”.
GovHack gets real
Paul said that just this morning he was working on a suite of apps called “Buttler Apps” and Business Butler is one of those. Eventually he and Andrew will release a commercial version.
Story by Peter Marks
Thank you Paul Atkins for participating in our Success Stories feature!