CLIENT

MyCoop

INDUSTRY

Other

CORE TECHNOLOGIES

Intro Image Angular
Intro Image MongoDB
Intro Image Node
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BACKGROUND

Our client wanted to make apartment life fun with convenient services and access to resources

Alex Norman, a Marketer for many Fortune 500 companies like American Express, Ford and Sony identified a need for a community portal to help residents of apartment buildings in New York City to connect and communicate effortlessly with each other. His vision was to create a centralized platform to make it easier for residents to access resources and services but also make living in an apartment building more fun and rewarding.

CHALLENGE

To design, develop, and deploy a social media app for apartment residents that would enable ID verification, collaboration, and trade 

The following were the key requirements of the social platform he was looking to build:

  • Social media registration - Free, easy and private registration process for residents and fellow neighbors using their Facebook IDs.
  • User authentication - User verification upon registration to ensure the validity of e-mail address of community members.
  • Auto-fill enabled building locator - So users can easily find their building by typing just a few letters and letting the app suggest the most suitable addresses in a drop-down. This allows users to connect with other buildings in their neighborhood and across the city.
  • Collaboration opportunities - To transform the way urban neighbors communicate, connect and collaborate with each other. The app needed to allow them to:
    1. Collaborate and share ideas for improving building amenities.
    2. Trade, buy and sell secondhand goods (i.e., furniture, electronics etc.) with other members of their community.

SOLUTION

An MVP minimum viable product for a community social networking portal strengthened with many features based on user feedback in the final version

We built this community social networking portal (MyCoop) using MEAN (Mongo DB, Angular, Node.js) Stack, which uses the MVC architecture (Model View Controller Architecture) and is a great fit for real time applications.

Phase I

Our team built the ‘Minimum Viable Product’ (MVP) in a short duration so as to allow the client to market the product to an interest group (basically a closed circle of friends and family) and get preliminary feedback.

Phase II

We incorporated this feedback in the final version of the product, which had more comprehensive set of features than the MVP. The following are the features:

  • User validation & authentication – Upon registration, the application sends an activation link to the registered e-mail ID to validate it.
  • Discussion forum - An intuitive and collaborative platform that enables tenants to interact and engage with neighbors from the same building, and neighboring buildings.
  • Building notification - Events and safety issue alerts are sent out by the app to its users.
  • Marketplace - The marketplace provides a secure platform that allows members to trade used furniture, household items and appliances with one another.
  • Simplified user management - Includes several access control levels to enable granular permission setup, personalized access to plugins and customization of the site’s appearance.
  • Quick registration – Users can easily sign up to Mycoop using Facebook’s login ID in less than 30 seconds without having to create a new ID.

 

TESTIMONIAL

Always-on approach 

Asahi Technologies is more than a development team; they’re our technology partner. Their team has a fantastic always-on approach to maintaining our business, with a hugely collaborative culture. They rolled up their sleeves and tackled product challenges and scenarios head-on, achieving results that my team hadn't even considered. They’re an invaluable extension to our business.

Alex Norman
CEO and Founder, MyCoop

IMPACT

A growing community with 400 buildings and over 65,000 registered users at inception 

The result is a robust, scalable and user-friendly community portal with collaborative, engaging and interactive features. MyCoop has been ratified by its user community as a very effective platform that provides an opportunity for residents with matching interests to connect.

The application we developed for MyCoop helps residents and communities in several ways.

  • Enhanced community involvement - The portal helps residents connect, collaborate and interact effortlessly, as well as share and crowd source ideas for a more connected and dynamic community.
  • Increased participation – The ease at which users can register has encouraged residents to join the portal and access current events and information. This has resulted in enhanced participation at community events, meetings and gatherings.
  • Signup from new families and friends of residents - When apartments become available for rent in a building, existing residents get to know this information before anyone else through MyCoop. This in turn allows them to refer friends and family, and that has helped attract many new trustworthy families to the community.
  • Rapidly growing user and building registrations - Currently, the portal has 65,000 registered users from more than 400 buildings that have already signed up, and the community is growing everyday.

HIGHLIGHTS

  • Web Portal to enable residents of large apartment buildings to form a more connected and dynamic community.
  • Secure marketplace that allows members to buy and sell furniture, appliances and other household items with other community members.
  • Collaborative platform that enables tenants to interact and engage with each other during emergencies.