Data Aha is committed to helping Chicago’s smaller nonprofits, agencies, and businesses wrangle and integrate multiple internal and public datasets together, and create interactive maps, charts, and dashboards.
These data communications and BI products can help organizations better understand their own operations through internal reporting, and improve awareness and strengthen partner relationships through creative external communications.
Development experience includes Tableau, Microsoft Power BI and Excel with Power Query and Pivots, Google Apps and Data Studio, ERSI Story Maps, Alteryx, and other products.
Effectively Balancing Quality, Cost, & Speed
Data Aha’s focus on smaller – scale data design and implementation projects can adapt and tailor project elements to fit your goals and resources.
Conversations about your projects, including cost estimates and platform recommendations are always complimentary.
Priced for Purpose and Impact
Projects are scoped based on your budget, goals, and preferences in order to minimize (bad) surprises.
Development costs and future updates are well managed by using off-the-shelf products and services that are discounted heavily for nonprofits and/or designed for smaller organizations.
Recent projects and proposals have ranged from $250 for custom mapping of addresses to Wards and Police Districts and delivered in a few days, to multiple thousands for a portal integrating multiple dashboards and datasets with recurring updates.
Great or Good Enough, Always “Aha!”
Products aim to please, but design complexity and the state of your data can greatly affect costs. Projects can range from minimally viable products that get the job done “quick and dirty” to pixel-perfect presentations that can be exported to print media.
If you are presenting to board members or the public, adding additional revision rounds, measures and interactivity may be worth it. If your audience is internal or OK with rough edges (or that is your design aesthetic), then costs and development time can be streamlined.
As the tools used have graphical user interfaces, staff members can more easily make tweaks, edits, and updates internally — or pay Data Aha to do them.
“Faster than a Tortoise” Timelines
Timelines, like costs, are dependent on main factors:
1) Project complexity;
2) Condition and format of your data;
3) Data preparation needed, including additional cleansing, transformation, aliasing, and error correction;
4) Revisions; and
5) Other projects already in the queue.
Development time of 5 to 21 business days are our sweet spot. These are assume projects with well formatted data and few other confounding factors…but all data projects come with hiccups, no two projects are alike, and so actual delivery time may vary!
Example Projects
Custom Map Project: 1-4 Weeks
Example for fast “one and done” map project to process addresses* to geographic boundary shapefile (e.g. ward, police district, precinct, tract, etc.), design two map views with unlimited filters.
| Step | Deliverable | Timeframe |
|---|---|---|
| Kickoff Meeting | Virtual meeting to discuss measures, assess data, and explain geocoding process. | 1-3 days from contract |
| Preparation: load data into vis tool | Excel spreadsheet to client with cleaned and merged data, custom groups, variables and labels. | 1-3 days from receipt of data |
| Design: initial data analysis and visualization | Send preliminary workbook with multiple draft options for graphics and dashboards. | 1-4 days from final data load |
| Testing: feedback and revisions | One revision round to finalize workbook. | 1-3 days per round |
| Delivery: dashboards published | Maps published to viz platform and as static PDF with lifetime usage license | 1-3 days after feedback round |
Multi-Dashboards Portal: 1-8 Weeks
Multi-tab portal with three dashboards comprised of eight interactive graphics (charts, maps or tables), two Parameter controls, and unlimited filters.
| Step | Deliverable | Timeframe |
|---|---|---|
| Project Kickoff | In person or virtual meeting to determine measures and evaluation questions to be addressed in dashboards. | 1 week from signing Contract |
| Preparation: data cleansing, transformation, label aliasing, loading into visualization tool | Excel spreadsheet to client with cleaned and merged data, custom groups and labels. | 2 – 14 days from receipt of data extract |
| Design: initial data analysis and visualization | Present preliminary workbook with multiple draft options for graphics and dashboards. | 2 – 14 days from final data load |
| Testing: feedback and revisions | Up to three feedback and revision rounds to finalize workbook. | Up to 1 Week per round |
| Delivery: dashboards published | Workbook delivered as file or published to client’s viz platform, with lifetime full license to use by client (see contract) | 1 Week after final feedback round |
Experience and Mission
Chadd Bennett, owner and principal designer, has created and implemented data communications products since 2009. After ten years as full time staff at a Washington state government agency and a nonprofit association, a family relocation to Chicago fomented the foundation of Data Aha.
By focusing on local mission-oriented organizations with limited resources, there is mutual benefit in each engagement: the organization shares their unique approach to the issues and challenges affecting Chicago and Illinois, while he shares cross-functional creativity and experience to uncover opportunities and insights for the organization… and hopefully some fun and interesting conversations during the process.
Read more about Chadd’s professional experience.