Project Overview
Insider is the newest and best way to keep up with what’s happening in your building and local community. It’s the easiest way to connect with your neighbours, share useful information, and discover all there is to know about where you live. The app brings all the information directly to you, so you don’t have to search multiple apps to find it. Insider makes being a local easy!
Project Commissioner
Project Creator
Team
Jeff Flynn, CTO / Product Owner
Ben Howard, Creative Director
Pop Panchapol, Scrum Master
Kongphop Kositanont, UX/UI Designer
Nitigron Ruengmontre, iOS Developer
Jarutorn Laokietkul, QA Tester
Sitsari Kitisakkul, Business Development
Jirayut Chootungyor, Backend Developer
Tanut Viteevanich, Backend Developer
Project Brief
Insider was created out of the need for a better, more integrated way for people to connect and engage with their local community digitally. The creators could see the need for engaging with one's community on two levels. First, there is the community within one's own building, for those living in apartment blocks and the like. Secondly, there is the wider neighbourhood in the vicinity of one's building. Thus Insider's concept of "Buildinghood" was born - and the app has been created to enable users to engage with their community on these two different levels.
Insider was designed to provide in-the-moment updates with information only relevant to your own community. It helps keep tenants informed, post or pass on important information to neighbours, see which units are listed for sale or rent in your building, and sell or buy unwanted items with far greater convenience than other online selling which generally does not have such a hyper-local focus.
Project Need
Insider is innovative in its approach, allowing a user follow's their building, pin pointing where they live on the map to connect with others residing in the same location with a uniquely local focus, to discover local photos and content from people you don’t currently follow.
It allows people to engage with the local community in a broader way than simply speaking to neighbours in passing to pick up great tips and share their knowledge more widely.
Hyper-local classifieds means peoples don't have to go further than they need to to pick up a bargain or get rid of unwanted possessions. Insider users can have a yard sale without the yard!
Examples of some of the user needs Insider is fulfilling:
- Stay up-to-date with neighbourhood news
- See what units are for sale and rent in your building and neighbourhood
- Ask your neighbours for tips on reliable contractors
- Give recommendations for baby sitters or dog walkers
- Locate your lost cat
- Organize a roof top party for your building
- Sell that gadget gathering dust to somebody in your building
- Set up an interest group or rally people to help a local good cause
- Promote an event or give special offers to local residents
- Always know the best spots to eat & drink with the latest venue reviews
- Never miss another gig, show or party
User Experience
The Insider experience is designed to help users connect, share and discover information and content related to their neighbourhood. The user must connect with Facebook to sign-up, to ensure that real people are talking about real issues, although they can take a look around before registering.
After that they can pin-point where they reside on a map, and select their building to follow. The user has complete control over how widely they want their neighbourhood's focus to span, automatically setting the distance from home (either 0.5 miles, 2 miles or 5 miles), manually setting a custom radius by pinching to zoom on the map, or choosing to focus on content within their ZIP code or the city as a whole.
Once locale is set, the user can browse and search feeds for either their Neighbourhood or Building, and apply filters to view General posts, Notices, Classified and Events, depending on the content they are looking for. The user is also in control of what content makes it into their feed in general, being able to toggle on or off News, Photos, Realestate, Business and Events, to customise the content to match what they are interested in.
As well as posts submitted within Insider itself, the app pulls in content from popular social and news feeds (including Instagram, Flickr, Zillow, Eventful, Eventbrite, Foursquare and Yelp), so instead of having to trawl multiple sources, Insider brings relevant hyper-local information to the user in a single app.
Project Marketing
The app is currently being beta tested in Manhattan, NYC. Facebook advertising is being used to target specific zip codes to ensure a concentration of users within certain communities, and social media will continue to be part of the marketing strategy to reach followers of community establishments.
For the main launch, also focused on New York to begin with, Insider will utilise on the ground street teams to raise awareness around key locations. This will include flyering outside of subway stations and taking part in local meetup events.
Being a community based app, social invites will be a key element to the growth strategy after the initial wave of user acquisition, encouraging users to introducing other neighbours to the platform.
Project Privacy
The company uses industry-standard 256-bit SSL encryption to protect user data.
Community
Apps more than ever are helping our communities to connect and engage, from emergency services to Not for Profits to social groups, these apps not only assist in delivery but provide efficiencies importantly providing those at the coalface more time to do their important work whether it be fighting fires or managing the local team. It's not all serious though we're also looking for apps that work to help bring the community groups together with fun and enjoyable activities.
More Details