NVT

For nearly five years now, we’ve been developing a series of apps for National Variety Trials (NVT), transforming Australia’s national crop data into an intuitive resource for farmers. These fast, scalable and multi-platform apps help farmers to access key insights anywhere, and they’re easily adapted with new features to suit the changing times.

In 2019 NVT Australia approached the team at Kobe to create a web based application to visually present their plethora of national crop yield data in a simple, clear format, so that farmers could glean insights right off the webpage, and make decisions quickly and easily. This solution needed to be able to handle all of NVT’s huge, high-dimensional dataset, which is always growing, and process it into a variety of interactive visualisations such as charts and tables, and have it all run on both handheld and desktop platforms. In short, we had to maximise data accessibility and usability, so that crop growers can see, understand and compare different national yield data, even when they’re in the field (literally).

To top it off, from the beginning it was clear that the app would need to facilitate future growth, as NVT gathered more and higher-fidelity data, sector needs changed, and customer wants became more apparent.

In order to meet this challenge, we needed not only an adaptive software stack, but an adaptive project management approach that would handle not only the initial development process, but also the post-launch iterations and improvements that were expected. As such, we engaged with the NVT team and set up a shared project management environment and ticketing system, bringing them and their expertise into the project’s lifecycle. This approach allowed both teams to brainstorm, propose and iterate upon new ideas, which Kobe Creations was more than capable of implementing.

For the app itself, our developers built a ‘headless’ architecture, meaning that the backend, integrated with NVT’s rich and growing dataset, is kept separate from the app’s visual frontend, making it easy for multiple apps to be connected in future. With data pre-processed in the backend and passed to the frontend, built with VueJS, it was extremely easy to create multi-platform, user-friendly interfaces and visualisation options, presenting the crop data in the clear and impactful ways that farmers needed.

As we iterated through development and worked with NVT, more features were identified and added, including advanced data customisation and filtration options, a ‘member’s login’ area with advanced options and personalised visualisation options, and caching and indexing logic that allows for super high speeds even with a massive dataset. Upon its launch, even the earliest version of the NVT app cemented itself as a premium resource for crop growers in Australia.

Our shared-management approach to the NVT app meant that new features could begin development right away. Time was dedicated monthly, and frequent meetings combined with the ticketing system have ensured a smooth and continuous pipeline of features; both NVT and Kobe aren’t afraid to make new proposals! The most common iterations were the addition of new crop types, growing regions and data formats, however larger changes include sharing options for the NVT data (including CSV downloads), the ability to embed the app into other webpages whilst displaying particular visualisations, advanced fast search, a ‘favourites’ feature for users to save specific data visualisations, and much more.

However, the most significant work was the expansion of a single app into an entire ecosystem of four web-apps (and counting). This includes an application dedicated to data concerning recent trial crop results, an app tracking crop diseases in Australia, and an ‘Honour Roll’ app that gives out awards to NVT contributors. In this way, our continuing work has kept NVT front-and-centre within Australian agriculture.

• Family of four integrated data visualisation applications built on a unified platform
• Headless architecture allowing expansion across multiple interfaces
• Advanced data processing handling thousands of crop data points
• Cross-platform compatibility ensuring field access on mobile devices
• Custom visualisation tools making complex agricultural data actionable
• Member login area with personalised settings and saved preferences

The NVT application ecosystem has fundamentally transformed how Australian farmers access and utilise crop data in their decision-making processes. The technical architecture we developed has proven exceptionally scalable, accommodating a five-fold increase in data volume since the initial launch without compromising performance. Page load times remain under two seconds even for complex visualisations, thanks to our advanced caching and indexing systems.

The collaborative development approach has created a virtuous cycle of improvement, where customer feedback drives new features, which in turn increases adoption and generates more valuable feedback. We're proud to continue our partnership with NVT, helping Australian farmers make data-driven decisions that improve yields and sustainability across the nation.

You can view and test out the web app here

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