Dataflex is a small product studio in South Africa. We work on a narrow problem: there is an enormous amount happening around us that nobody is writing down, and the decisions that depend on it get made on anecdote instead.
So we build the thing that writes it down - the capture, the interpretation, the schema and the report - and we treat all four as one product rather than four handovers.
What we actually do
Four kinds of work, one continuous job.
Most teams can do one or two of these well and then hand the rest over. The handovers are where the meaning leaks out - a detection loses its confidence score, a timestamp loses its timezone, an insight arrives in a format nobody can file.
01
Creative use
Finding the data that nobody thought to collect. A radio stream is a dataset. A pothole photo is a dataset. Ambient noise on a corner is a dataset. The product usually starts by noticing one.
02
Analysis
Models, fingerprinting, computer vision and geospatial rules - used carefully, always with a confidence attached, always checkable against the original capture.
03
Manipulation
The unglamorous middle: schemas, deduplication, geocoding, aggregation, k-anonymity thresholds, retention rules, exports in the exact shape the receiving system demands.
04
Presentation
Charts, maps, reports and interfaces built for the person who has to act on the finding - and for the moment they have to defend it to somebody else.
Current work
Eight products on the bench.
Short briefs. Two are in production, some are mid-build, and some are still specifications we believe in. If one is close to something you need, ask us for the longer version.
RadioSummaries
In productionRadio intelligence
Radio is the most-consumed medium in the country and the least documented. RadioSummaries monitors the stations a client chooses and writes down what happened on them: structured summaries of talk and news programming, every song identified with its ISRC, and every ad break logged - including independent, fingerprint-verified proof that a specific campaign creative actually went to air. Everything lands in a private, searchable archive with exports built for the bodies that have to accept them.
Finding your friends at a festival is a solved problem everywhere except in practice. WeAre gives a group a shared live map for the duration of an event - and then forgets. Positions are ephemeral by design: nothing is written to permanent storage, there is no location history to leak, subpoena or sell, and blocked pairs are invisible to each other at the point of delivery rather than in the interface. Alongside it, an organiser portal turns the same movement into crowd analytics that only ever describe groups, never individuals.
ReadsOpt-in live position, event geofences
WritesGroup map, meetups, crowd density
ServesFestival-goers and event organisers
My Beautiful City
In buildPhotography, place
A photo platform organised by city rather than by follower count - browse down from continent to country to city, or just tap a point on the world map. The interesting part is underneath: every photograph carries EXIF metadata that most platforms either strip silently or publish carelessly. Here it is surfaced as its own panel, and the photographer decides on every single upload whether the location is exact, deliberately fuzzed, or kept private entirely.
ReadsPhotographs and their embedded metadata
WritesCity feeds, consented photo map, EXIF panel
ServesTravellers, photographers, locals
Afrolink
In buildSocial platform
A public-square social network built for the continent's actual conditions rather than a Californian median: mid-range Android handsets, expensive mobile data, and a data-saver mode that isn't an afterthought. Trending is computed per country, because what is trending in Lagos genuinely is not what is trending in Nairobi, and a single global list serves neither. Five interface languages, right-to-left included, plus the moderation, blocking, export and deletion machinery a platform needs before it has users, not after.
ReadsPosts, follows, engagement signals
WritesRanked feeds, country-aware trends
ServesUsers across African markets
Potmap
In designCivic reporting
Potholes and dead robots, mapped by the people who drive past them. Anyone can browse the map without an account; changing what it says requires one. The design problem isn't collecting reports - it's trust. One report is a claim; a second independent contributor makes it credible; a repair claim plus two independent confirmations closes it, and any newer contradictory evidence reopens it. Every incident keeps an immutable observation history and can go through repeated repair and recurrence cycles, because in reality it does.
ReadsResident reports, photos, confirmations
WritesCanonical incidents, resolution history
ServesResidents, municipalities, road users
City Noise Index
PrototypeEnvironmental sensing
How loud is that street, actually - at 3pm on a Tuesday and at 3am on a Saturday? Small solar-powered nodes measure sound pressure and send only numbers over a long-range, low-power network, building a searchable historical index for streets, transport hubs, entertainment strips and construction zones. It is a sound-level instrument and deliberately not a listening device: samples are turned into statistics in memory and discarded on the spot. No audio is stored, transmitted, or recognised, and there is no file for anyone to ask for later.
ReadsSound pressure level - never audio
WritesTime-series index, comparisons, heatmaps
ServesResidents, planners, municipalities
HighwayCam SA
Pilot planningRoadside imaging
Solar-powered camera nodes beside the road, reporting what the traffic is doing right now - the sort of thing you check before choosing a route, and which currently doesn't exist for most of the country's network. Each node captures a short burst on a schedule, describes the scene, and publishes a derivative with faces and licence plates blurred before anything leaves the device's pipeline. The prohibited-use boundary is written into the specification rather than the terms of service: no recognition, no plate reading, no tracking of individual vehicles.
ReadsScheduled roadside image bursts
WritesTraffic condition reports, blurred stills
ServesRoad users, fleet and logistics operators
FrameFeed
In productionDisplay advertising
Every sports bar, waiting room and hotel lobby already has a screen playing something. FrameFeed sits between the source and the display: the match keeps playing, slightly smaller, and the reclaimed border becomes scheduled advertising space for specials, promotions and QR codes. A small box on the wall turns a screen the venue already owns and already pays for into inventory it can sell.
It is installed and running. Campaigns are scheduled centrally across every venue at once, but the box does not depend on the line staying up - content is verified before it can reach the screen, a device that loses its connection keeps playing and reconciles later, and proof-of-play is deduplicated so a retry can never inflate an advertiser's numbers.
ReadsLive video source and a campaign schedule
WritesComposed output, proof-of-play log
ServesVenues, retailers, local advertisers
Working with us
Three ways this usually starts.
A Pilot
Run an existing product on your data
Scoped, short, and deliberately small - a handful of stations, one suburb, one venue. You see real output from your own market before anyone signs anything longer.
B Build
A product for a signal only you have
You know something is happening in your operation that nobody is capturing. We scope the capture, the schema and the reporting as one piece of work, and build it.
C Operate
We keep it running
Capture pipelines need somebody watching them. We run and maintain what we build, or hand it over with the documentation to run it yourself. Both are fine.
Next step
Ask us for the longer version.
If one of these is close to something you need - or if you have a signal of your own that nobody is capturing - the first conversation is short and costs nothing.