A few decades ago, cafeteria owners in Hilversum found a way to fill their venues during the quieter evenings from Monday to Wednesday. Their solution? Placing pool tables and organizing a pool competition. Various teams, each representing a different cafeteria, competed, with the heart of the competition rooted in pool café Hippo in Hilversum, where the board oversaw everything. The idea spread quickly, and by 2024, it had grown to include 9 cafeterias, 17 teams, and 300 members.
Seven years ago, match results were still manually collected via paper score sheets. As the competition expanded, this process became inefficient. To streamline things, a new system was introduced: teams would take a photo of their score sheet and send it via WhatsApp to the score coordinator, who would then manually update an Excel sheet. A screenshot of this sheet was later uploaded to a basic, static website.
As a dedicated participant over the past two years, I noticed the growing frustrations among players due to delays and errors in the score updates. Seeing the limitations of the current system, I approached the board, who coincidentally had already been thinking about improvements. This marked the beginning of my graduation project.
