THE NUCHWEZI DATA PLATFORM (previsouly and sometimes also called “Project Okot”)
WHAT IS IT? It is a single mobile app, together with a suit of related web technologies, that are very useful in helping anyone build and deploy data apps that are ready for the modern world. The single mobile app required to get started, is called “NuChwezi”, and it can be freely downloaded via the Google Play Store here. Currently, we only natively support Android, but any other device with a web browser can still use the technology, via the web. For those merely using it to get work done – being paid to collect data for example, we’ve also coined the phrase “DNA”, which stands for “Data via NuChwezi Agent” or “Data via NuChwezi App”, so fans of our app love to call themselves “DNA Agents” or “Team DNA”, as nod to the powerful evolution system that’s seen mankind and our creation evolve to what it is now!
WHAT PROBLEMS DOES IT SOLVE? The NuChwezi Data Platform is a tool chain for the automation of business intelligence and data analysis tasks, without directly writing any source code. Basically, the technology can help solve any problem that can be reduced to a workable solution using research data; by designing a well structured survey (commonly called “tool�); collecting data with it, and then mining insights from the results, via automated analysis. The technology is special in the sense that it eliminates the common barriers to adopting datadriven, research-driven decision making processes, by making it dead-simple for anyone with a little understanding of the platform, to get started designing and exploiting real-world data apps in a fraction of the time it would normally take, and without the typical cognitive overload that other platforms impose on new users (especially non-technical ones).
WHO NEEDS IT? a. Business owners in need of simple, continuous, and accurate monitoring and evaluation of their business processes via mobile or web, in and out of office. b. NGOs and other large organizations whose optimal performance relies on having quick and reliable access to data and insights about internal or external metrics, and which data they need to collect themselves on-demand, with low ICT overheads, and especially while keeping such operations low on budget. c. Researchers at all levels – whether it’s students wishing to document school lab experiments, proffessors collecting a little extra data for their esoteric projects or industrial experts in need of a quick and dirty way to source for actionable data about difficult processes; whenever one has a need to put together a form for collecting data, and if they don’t wish to use paper or Excel sheets to do this, then our technology is the simplest, most realible option that’s easily accessible to users at all levels. d. Data Hobbysits – it could be friends of democracy, that just wish to crowd-source for opinion using distributed polls; it could be someone in need of documenting and analyzing their own eating habits (“self quantification”),etc. In fact, we’ve even been able to design and test such concepts as an e-magazine and even a basic social network, via this same platform, using the same simple tools that everyone else has access too!
HOW DOES ONE START U SING IT? If you are building your own data app, or starting from scratch, then your entry point should be The Studio – https://studio.nuchwezi.com, which is a simple interface from which you can compose your data app. To help you easily navigate the rest of this guide, allow me to momentarily define the following essential terms we use:
Persona: this is a “mask” that can be assumed by the NuChwezi app, so that it looks and behaves as a totally different app. Essentially, instead of installing a new mobile app every time you deploy a workload from our platform, the NuChwezi app merely reads and parses a “persona” specification, which then transforms it into the data app you designed via the Studio. You don’t have to actually know what the persona is underthe hood, for you to work with it, the studio helps you design and modify them without requiring you to know the underlying technology behind this magic. Histrion: this is what the engine of the NuChwezi app is – a general purpose app that behaves like an actor in a theatre; capable of assuming new roles and looks on-demand, based on the currently active script – in our case, the “script” being the “persona” mentioned above. To more technical users, the histrion is a kind of browser. Acts: this is what we call complete and verified composite records generated as a result of a user entering and submitting data compatible with a persona. For example, a single record holding the values of the weight and mass of a patient as recorded and verified via a “Body Mass Index” persona, is what we’d call a single “act”. On the NuChwezi platform, these records contain a little extra meta-data used to correctly identify and aggregate them later for analysis, and this special data structure is what warrants a unique name, to distinguish it from ordinary record types typical of web forms. Theatre: in the jargon of the NuChwezi Data Platform, is any server that’s compatible with the “Persona Protocol” – meaning, it can accept, store and serve not just personas, but can also do the same for “Acts”, the data records submitted from the NuChwezi app, or some other compatible tools such as web-based histrions (an example of which is here). When designing your apps via The Studio, you have the option to specify a custom “Theatre Address” – which is a URL pointing to an “Act-Saving-Endpoint”, that can be hosted on your own physical or virtual servers, or you can just accept the defaults – in which case all your published personas and acts, get hosted on our cloud-powered theatre instance (currently running at global scale, thanks to Microsoft’s Azure). Diviner: If you are like most users, you will not want to waste time building custom data analysis tools for the data collected using our platform. So, to make it simple for you, once you publish a data app via The Studio, you automatically have created for you, a tool capable of browsing and analyzing any data submitted via your persona. This tool allows for simple to advance analysis – you can do visuals, tables, export to PDF or Excel and even build persistent data analysis dashboards for quick sharing and discovery of insights later on. Allo this, without you having to tweak or modify the platform’s code in any way. The “Data Diviner” is the essential companion to the histrion, and is also accessible directly via mobile, on the NuChwezi app still, for each data app you have loaded on the platform (there are some restrictions for apps whose data is meant to remain private).
So, in brief, here’s how a typical data app experience would look like using our platform: a. b. c. d. e. f.
Design and compose your persona via The Studio Publish the persona to The Theatre. Load the persona onto the NuChwezi App. Enter data into the persona. Verify the data (automatic step upon submission). Save (useful when working offline or in areas of poor connectivity) or Send (if there’s an active data connection). g. Visit The Diviner instance of your persona. h. Browse and analyze any data found under your persona’s data repository (requires an active data connection, as the acts have to be fetched from a theatre server online). i. Export or share your visuals and analysis as you will – images, PDF, Excel, JSON and more. For users with a little experience, it’s also possible to just use the studio to clone an existing data app, and just modify it to what you prefer – check the “Import” features at the studio linked to above. You can clone existing apps via URLs pointing to proper “persona” objects, *.persona files or compatible persona JSON directly pasted into the import box at the studio. Also, instead of using our own analysis tools, it’s possible to just “pull” data out of our servers into your own servers for aggregation or analysis. Actually, for more demanding data analysis workloads, we readily offer help to allow you to leverage the world’s best data analysis platform – Microsoft’s Power BI, by merely consuming the auto-generated data APIs of your published app, from the NuChwezi platform, into PowerBI as JSON data sources. This then allows power users to exploit the immense analytical powers of this platform, while continuing to exploit and enjoy the indespensible flexibility of our data collection tools.
WHAT TECHNOLOGIES ARE SIMILAR TO THIS? Currently, we are aware of the following technologies being similar to, but not necessarily being direct replacement s of our own technology stack: a. Microsoft’s PowerBI (similar in terms of helping automate data analysis) – similar to our “Diviner” tool. b. Google Forms (similar to our “Web Histrion”, but with fewer data types than we actually support) c. AppSheet (somewhat closer to our concept, but evidently more suited to power users) d. Survey Monkey (especially in the ability to serve polls via web, and the ability to sync collected results via mail, a feature we offer to premium users among others)
WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS OF USING THIS TECHNOLOGY INSTEAD? The key selling points of our technology are: 1. We offer power to the user, without sacrificing simplicity. 2. With focus on speed, we ensure than users with even a litter experience, can design and deploy very complex data analysis workloads in a fraction of the time it would typically take using any of our competitor’s tool chains, and we can readily demonstrate this power to any interested client on-demand. 3. Flexibility. As you might have noticed, or as you will while exploring and using our technology, it’s possible to use just what you want from our stack and no more – the studio, histrion, diviner and theatre can each be used in isolation of the others, and this readily allows experienced users to hook in and add custom functionality or extend our platform with new powers and features as needed. 4. Cheap. Build and deploying apps on our platform is dead cheap and simple, and all this, without sacrificing data security or integrity. We currently allow annonymous users to freely experiment on and use our main platform for small workloads, but do offer highly competitive prices for anyone interested in leveraging our platform for commercial purposes. 5. Scale. From the very start, we designed our technology with the modern world of BIG, Global-Scale Data workloads in mind. It’s the reason we chose to build our platform on top of the world’s best and largest Cloud Platform – Microsoft’s Azure Cloud. We can guarantee that anyone interested in operating at scale, no matter what the nature of their survey tools, can easily and reliably depend on us.
7. HOW DOES ONE DO BUSINESS WITH US? We are ready and glad to engage you, no matter who you are – individual, entreprise, NGO or Government, to understand your data collection and data analysis needs, and then help you design, deploy and publish world-class data apps using our proprietary technology and those we recommend. Currently, our main office and research lab is physically located in Garuga, Entebbe, at NuChwezi (view on Google Maps); Plot 266, Bugabo.
Official Contacts: Tel: +256704464749 Skype: nemesisfixx Email: joe@nuchwezi.com | joewillrich@gmail.com Website: https://nuchwezi.com Working Hours: Mon – Fri, 9am – 4pm.