FieldIQ™: why we started from a blank page in summer 2025

Introduction

In summer 2025, a decision was made at Tawkr: tear down an existing application and start again from almost a blank page.

This isn't a trivial decision. It means accepting to begin again — to question what exists, set it aside, and rebuild from what's been learned.

It's from this decision that FieldIQ™ as it exists today was born. And Maxime, Tawkr's Data & Projects Manager, explains how it happened — from the very beginning.

Starting from a blank page — why?

"During summer 2025, we decided to completely overhaul this application to truly start again from almost a blank page to develop FieldIQ."

A blank page, in this context, isn't a lack of direction. It's a method. It means deciding not to start from the constraints of what already exists, but from the actual needs — those of the field, those of the experts who work there every day.

To get there, you first have to go and look.

Developers in the field — the decision that changes everything

What distinguishes FieldIQ™'s development from a standard technical overhaul is this choice: sending the developers into the field before writing a single line of code.

"The base story was our developers Luminos, based in Romania, who spent several days, several weeks in the field to see how things actually worked."

Luminos — Tawkr's development studio partner — immersed their teams in the daily reality of field campaigns. Several days. Several weeks. Observing, understanding, asking the right questions before beginning to build the answers.

It's an approach that takes time. And it produces tools radically different from those built purely behind a screen.

The first idea — eliminating paper and pencil

From this field immersion, one idea emerged. Simple on the surface. Ambitious in its implications.

"The first idea, which may seem very simple, was to eliminate paper and pencil. Something very basic, very useful and quite ambitious, it has to be said."

Eliminating paper and pencil. Not a metaphor. This was literally the daily reality of Tawkr's field experts.

"Before, our field experts, when they were going door to door to meet donors and consumers, used a sheet of paper with a pencil to note down which door, which street they'd covered, etc."

A notepad. A pencil. And a field reality that anyone who has ever knocked on doors in the rain understands immediately.

The field — it's also this

"Except that in the field, sometimes it rains. The papers are crumpled, lost, wet, soaked."

This isn't an anecdote. It's the description of a structural problem: data that disappears before it can even be processed. Information lost in a pocket, crumpled in a bag, illegible after a downpour.

"Everyone had their own way of doing things and it was very hard to use afterwards."

Every expert had their own method. Their own notation. Their own abbreviations. And when it came to centralising, analysing, turning this data into decisions — none of it aggregated cleanly.

That's the problem FieldIQ™ solves at source.

Conclusion

FieldIQ™ could have been born from a specification document. From a management meeting. From a technology watch session.

It was born from a wet notepad.

And that's precisely why it works — because it was thought through from the field, for the field, by people who took the time to go and see what was really happening before starting to build.

Field sales stays human. The tools we give it are now up to the task.

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When and why did Tawkr develop FieldIQ™ ?

In summer 2025, Tawkr decided to completely overhaul its existing application and start from a blank page to develop FieldIQ™ — beginning from the concrete needs of field experts rather than the constraints of what already existed.

How did the FieldIQ™ developers design the tool?

Developers from Luminos — Tawkr's partner studio based in Romania — spent several days and weeks in the field to directly observe how acquisition campaigns actually worked before writing a line of code.

What concrete problem does FieldIQ™ solve?

Before FieldIQ™, field experts used paper and pencil to record their interactions — doors knocked, streets covered, results. In the field, these papers got lost, wet, illegible. Everyone had their own method, making data very hard to centralise and use. FieldIQ™ replaces this with guided smartphone entry in real time.

Who is Maxime at Tawkr?

Maxime is Tawkr's Data & Projects Manager. He is one of the central figures behind FieldIQ™'s development and Tawkr's data strategy.