FAQs

→ We are a small cooperative specialized in offering services to (mostly scientific) research projects. General tech consulting, implementation of web-based apps, mostly around science communication, both inside and outside the research community. In recent years, we have mostly worked with agriculturual and landscape research groups, focusing on economic, ecologic and other societal aspects.

→ We are Johannes (software development) and Dorota (design). Dorotas work can be found here: https://dorotaorlof.com.

→ To understand the research topics, we want to take our clients' point of view on their work. So we'll prepare by reading publications, project descriptions, funding requests etc.

→ We like to understand our client's audience groups, so we look into publications targeting those groups to get a feeling of the base line.

→ Among ourselves, we communicate using video calls, but we are longtime friends and colleagues, and see each other in person every few months or so.

→ We mostly speak English (one native German speaker and one native Polish speaker that also speaks German).

→ Client communication (English or German) typically consists of

• In-person meetings if feasible, also depending on project scope.
• Irregular video calls with clients, whenever something comes up.
• Quick calls with clients on smaller issues.
• Notion or another online collaboration tool where we track issues, discuss features etc.

→ Our focus is on creating rich, intuitive web-apps for explaining complex research results and their interpretation and relevance.

• One recurring topic which we enjoy is geospatial map-based interfaces.

→ We prefer solid and proven, but future-proof tech as the basis for interesting applications.

→ Some tech that is often part of our projects: Vue, Rails, Typescript, Docker, Git and Figma.

We recognize AI is more than just a new tool. To us, it seems more like an automated tool factory, and we are sure that even this comparison will have to be updated soon enough.

→ We are using it for many things, which we are transparent about, but:

→ We take responsibility for our production code, we never defer to AI

→ Some examples of how we use it:

• It helps with sticky implementation problems
• It generates code starting points, for example based on visual designs
• It provides code reviews and improvement suggestions
• It assists us with generating test code
• It generates internal documentation

→ We pass on efficiency gains to our clients:

• they go into our estimates
• we only bill real human time spent

→ We are experts at using AI agents, we do not have to learn or experiment with them on the job

→ We are happy to assist our clients at using AI for themselves

→ We prefer open source products, but use proprietary cloud AI (like claude code) for certain tasks which benefit from it. That being said:

→ We know that there can be many reasons for not wanting AI in a project. We can constrain the use of AI as follows:

• european-only cloud services (f. i. mistral.ai)
• no cloud services, only local AI (we run our own local inference server)
• no AI (we each have over a decade of experience working like that)

We can, but we are not specialized in this. We can cover the general content and technical side. For example animated explainer videos. But for developing your engagement strategy or the next viral meme, we would rather refer you to one of our collegues.

We write well-structured, semantically coherent and accessible code and content, which are important SEO criteria. We can help you implement usage tracking to measure your site's or app's performance. However, this is not our focus, and if you have a purely SEO-related project request, we would likely refer you to one of our more specialized colleagues.

We can build native apps, but advise against it for most cases. Compared to highly dynamic web apps, they are typically more expensive to run and maintain. If the app stores as distribution channels are the main motivation, it may be possible to add a wrapper around your web app to get them into app stores.

Yes!

→ Our work on web apps and sites, especially for larger projects, is often accompanied by visual design work.

→ Our focus is on structure, legibility, and conceptual coherence, rather than purely on commercial branding. This includes:

• Visual identity systems
• Printed materials such as publications, posters, and exhibition matter
• Animations and motion graphics
• Illustrations and custom visuals
• Infographics and data-driven visual explanations

→ We like to develop visual and technical elements together, and apply design to help communicate complex ideas.