Reviews to Facts: The Kenya Theatre Awards Tech Design
When you make a promise to watch all Kenyan theatrical performances before nominating the most outstanding acts, there are certain systematic solutions you must implement to sustain the management of information.
Objective
Develop an information management and internal communication system to facilitate the Kenya Theatre Awards jury process.
Outcome
A seamless information routing system and a data collection platform with a visualised reporting dashboard, that generates the Kenya Theatre Awards statistics and supports the jury nomination process.
The first Kenya Theatre Awards jury panel was tasked with the challenge of watching all performances before preparing nominations. This meant that, on average, the jury would easily watch over 500 shows collectively, and literally recall all 500 in detail for a fair analysis. I had to make sure I kept a record of their sentiments and opinions, so as not to rely on natural memory or basic notes during the nomination conferences.
I curated a simple yet powerful information routing system that serves the KTA jury process to this date. With the objective of automating all processes that did not require direct human management, I started with a jury invitation module that receives and broadcasts show alerts to all jury members. This was followed by a focus on recording show data, where a performance details module came in handy to ensure a measurable data structure with visualised reports. This module became the basis of the annual theatrical statistics produced by the Kenya Theatre Awards. The next challenge was to record and organise the jury’s records, sentiments and scores, for all the performances each of them watched. I availed a jury records system that they used after each performance, helping them make fresh notes, leave comments and preliminary scores, for a detailed individual analysis at the end of each jury period.