Vizzuality wants to work with the Governance Data Alliance (GDA) to build a proof-of-concept ‘country dashboard’, which unites the powerful data of each of the GDA partners into a cohesive whole. With a focus on tone, quality and usability, we will ensure that this dashboard can make your data available, accessible and usable. Further, we want to deliver a product that excites potential funders, partners and developers with the possibilities of the tool; while it may have minimum viable functionality, we aim to deliver maximum visual impact.

A plan to meet your objectives

From reading your ToR, we can see two key objectives that this dashboard would have to meet.

Firstly, we would need to build something accessible, available and usable, which are objectives for many projects at Vizzuality. To get a global audience to see your data, you need to create a mobile responsive website; increasingly, mobiles are the primary means of sourcing information and they provide unparalleled reach to your users across the world. If you want them to read your data, the website needs to be beautiful, providing visual incentives and rewards for reading and engaging with the data. At Vizzuality, we believe that you’ll only get people to really use data in their lives, and keep coming back for more, if they are excited; so you also need to programme a little bit of joy into a website.

The second, implicit, objective is to secure buy-in from donors and partners for further development. The idea behind this project has huge potential, but it will not get built if donors or partners are not on board with the idea or don’t see the opportunities available. Thus, when we build each feature and think about how it will deliver value, we need to think both about the ‘real-world’ user group — those using the data to monitor governance — and the ‘donor/partner’ user group — whose interest may lie just in funding or being part of the project. Many Vizzuality projects start as a small contract to build websites and tools that prove a particular concept, which then go on to achieve great success. Websites like Global Forest Watch and NGO Aid Map. We will use this experience (outlined in more detail below) to ensure we build a dashboard that’s captivating and scalable, securing buy-in and laying strong foundations to develop a full production version.

What we would build

Vizzuality will work with you to create an interactive web application that illustrates how each country is performing for a number of indicators created by the GDA partners. We will also create a new logo for you and a simple style guide for 2–4 static pages that accompany the dashboard, including typography, colour and layout. As part of the build and launch phase we will deliver training to your staff so you are fully equipped to manage the site into the future.

The dashboard will contain the features listed below in the form of a minimum viable product, a prioritised list of the features we need to deliver to achieve our goals. We usually build with this approach to ensure we create the most valuable features to a high quality. Our minimum viable product is an extension of your Minimum Viable feature list contained in the ToR.

• User can view a range of indicators for their country, with clear visual cues displaying ‘good’ and ‘bad’ statuses, on a responsive dashboard
• User can compare one country with another country of similar characteristics (income level, region etc)
• User can view change over time for a range of indicators for their country
• User can quickly and easily download charts and visuals in paper or .pdf format
• Admins can view analytics data for the dashboard
• User can access the database with an API
• User can view 2–4 static pages listing more information on what the site is about, further contact information, and a blog site
• User can order or filter indicators, based on theme or current status of that indicator (good/ bad etc)
• Admins can add new datasets into the dashboard and manage static content using Github
• The dashboard automatically suggests relevant countries for comparison, based on characteristics like geography and income, when users chooses a country for comparison

Please see the budget in this google spreadsheet for a break down of how much each activity will cost.

We recognise that you are still to decide on how much of the data complexity will be shown (overall scores vs deeper display of data) and are happy to work with you at the onset of the project to work out what approach will deliver the most value for a proof-of-concept. As adding breakdowns and complexity would cost much more time and money, we strongly advise starting just with summaries of the data at this point.

Data will be hosted on and served through CartoDB, so a new account will need to be created for this. CartoDB will also allow us to quickly generate powerful APIs for your data so others can use it too. We expect you will only need a small account (Magellan or John Snow), but this is dependent on the amount of data you have. With the CartoDB interface you will be able to simply upload new or update the data and indexes.

The 2–4 static pages will be created using Jekyll and hosted on Github Pages. Jekyll uses markdown language to create each page; we currently use it for our website and have found it flexible, useful and easy to manage for our non-engineering team. Changes can be made at any time using Github and they will go live automatically. It should be relatively simple to get to grips with the language and we will offer guidance to you during the project to ensure your team have all the information you need to run the website smoothly.

Milestones for the build

We are adept at working to tight schedules, delivering high quality functionality quickly. The milestones below illustrate the approximate phasing and pacing of the work. We are happy to discuss this with you further should we be successful with our proposal. All timing is from date of contract signature

• Week 1: Discovery: In this phase we work with you to learn about the expectations and user needs for the project. We will re-assess the Minimum Viable Product and ensure it is on course to meet your expectations, is easily usable by the intended audience and delights donors.
• Week 1-2: Functional Analysis. Our back end engineers will work with you to analyse your data, test how easy it is to work with and work out what kinds of visualisations could be generated.
• Week 2–6: Design. Using the information gathered in discovery and functional analysis, our design team will create sketches and wireframes for the dashboard that meet them. By Week 3 we expect to have agreement on a set of wireframes for the site, with ongoing support provided by the designers throughout the project to check for quality and design new features where they are needed. By Week 5 we expect to have sign-off on a new, simple logo for the website. We will need a rough idea of the length of content and the types of content (text, logos, pictures etc) that will be shown on the other static pages on the website at this stage, but nothing precise.
• Week 3–9: Engineering. Our expert engineers will turn the wireframes and sketches into a working website, built on a CartoDB Platform. We will ask for regular feedback from core project staff throughout, complemented by wider user testing in Weeks 5 and 8. All feedback will be used to refine the website until we are all satisfied with the dashboard. By the end of Week 9 we expect to have a completed dashboard with no bugs that is ready for launch. In order to test effectively, we would ask that the final contents for the static pages on the website are available before Week 7.
• Week 9–10. Launch. We will work with you to create a campaign to launch the site, ensuring it visited by a suitably wide audience of users for further testing. At this point we will also set up analytics and indicators so that we can assess the success of the dashboard and identify areas for improvement in the future. Finally, in this phase we will provide tutorials on how to use CartoDB (for data and index upload), Github (to amend static content) and Google Analytics.

How we Build

Vizzuality adopts an agile, continuous delivery methodology when developing technology. For us, this means seeking and adapting to feedback throughout the project in order to build the best possible product with a clear link between use and real world impact. The principles below outline the key parts of this approach.

We build quickly through iteration. We will test each iteration with key GDA staff to check if the solution works and refine or discard the feature based on feedback received. We then move onto the next feature until a release point (ending one phase). By being as flexible as possible and experimenting constantly, we are able to build the most useful functionality as quickly as possible to a high quality. This may mean daily stand-ups and meetings at the most intense points to talk through the state of the dashboard and next steps for development.

We build products with specific users in mind, to fit with their needs, preferences and capabilities. We will deliver in a couple of phases in order get feedback as soon as possible on our concepts and prototypes, and adapt the development process to meet expectations. Each release is an opportunity to learn more about the needs of the users and ensure the final dashboard delivers the most value possible. As this is a short, quick project, we would appreciate it if the GDA can line up 2–3 prospective users as testers so that we can get a representative amount of user feedback.

GDA are part of the project team. Your feedback is extremely valuable and we will ask for it often. We will also identify the key horizontal relationships (designer to designer, manager to manager etc) which should be built between us to enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of our work together. This strategy has worked very well for many of our other projects, especially those with short timeframes, because it removes the time burden of hierarchical working patterns (e.g. having to pass an issue up a chain, then across organisations, then back down a chain instead of talking across at the same level).

Analytics are essential for evaluating progress and learning about users. We will work with your team to define the most appropriate measures of user satisfaction with the product. This is especially so that feedback and understanding of users gleaned during testing and after launch feeds neatly into the future development of this dashboard.

Our technology choices will be open source and most suitable for the project. We will build the front end using custom html, javascript and css. For the back end, we will build on a CartoDB platform. During the development of the application we will deploy regularly to a staging server before the final deploy to a production server. The server OS and web server will likely be Ubuntu with nginx. In terms of browser support, we will follow our existing practices with Global Forest Watch, NGO Aid Map and Cash Atlas and ensure the site works on the two most recent versions of the four main browsers (Chrome, Safari, Firefox, IE). This covers around 95% of users.

We will also incorporate best practices for building software that scales easily. Many Vizzuality projects start as a small contract to build a web tool that demonstrates the value of beautiful, clear data visualisation. From this initial success we have been able to identify pathways to scale up tools to achieve much greater impact; NGO Aid Map and GFW are two eminent examples. In order to help this piece of work scale easily in the future, we will follow a number of good development practices (outlined below). This will need to be carefully discussed with your staff early in the project to assess how much scaling is required and the implications for data and visualisation, because the best designs are based on knowing what the data will look like.

• modular design to make it easier to add new features in the future
• embrace open source software throughout; they’re usually the best supported software and so keep up with changes in web technology, meaning features built now are less likely to break after a few years
• make it as easy as possible for your staff to manage the content on the website, bearing in mind the constraints on budget and time
• document continuously to help others to explore the codebase, suggest edits or add new features

We extend the creativity of the world’s most important organisations

Throughout the history of Vizzuality, a number of world-leading organisations have asked us for help in tackling visualisation challenges. Whether that’s providing NASA with an interface that allows citizen scientists to find life at the bottom of the sea for Project Neemo or a new way to unlock the world’s data on forest change in Global Forest Watch, we have been honoured to work on significant global challenges.

The products we create have delivered impact at scale; they have been used to address deforestation, coordinate emergency relief in disaster situations and analyse threats to endangered species. Seeing our work being used to do good in the real world is one of the great pleasures of working at Vizzuality. Our staff give every drop of creativity to each challenge to ensure each project delivers its full potential.

When people have worked with us and seen the impact our work can deliver, they ask us back for more. At the beginning of this year we worked with Google to showcase their Trends data, our third project with them, while the Environmental Democracy Index was our third project with the World Resources Institute. We have also been collaborating with Interaction for nearly 5 years now on NGO Aid Map, increasing its capabilities and helping them respond to new situations as they arise.

The perfect blend of expertise

When people think of Vizzuality they think of the future: they look to us to see what’s at the cutting edge of data visualisation. This is our core expertise. We constantly push the boundaries of what can be achieved with data and software, whether it’s a certain design feature, integrating multiple libraries in new ways to create a more immersive user experience or working ‘at the edge of APIs’ to make the most of the data.

You can see this in a number of our projects. We released the Environmental Democracy Index a few months ago and we’ve found that our alternative approach to dashboards (comparing countries against each other) is a powerful hook for users to understand the data. Last year we worked with the New York Mayor’s Office to build a proof-of-concept dashboard for all performance indicators in the city, from crime to health; we are due to start work on a full production version later this year. While the focus is on the mapping function, we also equipped Global Forest Watch with country dashboards to summarise the key information on the state of forests. Our analytics suggest the dashboards are becoming an increasingly utilised feature as users return to check for updates to the overall picture of forest change in their country, a neighbouring country or a country with notable forest cover.

Our ability to innovate and deliver exciting products is in no small part down to our staff. With experience in a number of sectors, from architecture to renewable energy and the UN system, backed by world-class degrees, they are ready to respond to a huge range of challenges. While traditionally we have worked on environmental issues (biodiversity, conservation and protected areas), we’ve built a number of tools for the international development community and around international politics. And right now we’re working with the World Bank to visualise their socio-economic data for South Asia, helping the European Space Agency to highlight their earth observation products and collaborating with Foundations in Canada to improve their city planning.

A great tool also requires an input of creativity, imagination and belief from our clients; from the Terms of Reference for this work, we believe the GDA has the vision to make a truly astounding dashboard. We don’t normally bid for work; people regularly ask to work with Vizzuality. When we read this proposal we could see huge potential and thought it was the perfect fit for us, so couldn’t help but put our name in the hat. We hope you choose us!