Overview

We worked with the Rhodium Group, a group of successful, established digital entrepreneurs and investors, to build a home for communities that currently live on the facebook group ecosystem. We spent 6 weeks doing a design sprint. This is our results.

Challenge

Facebook Groups is a common destination for a group of people of similar interest. Community Managers are tasked to manage their members using only the features Facebook provides. The challenge is that people are already using Facebook and it is a natural destination for social interactions. How do we create an alternative that is both attractive to the community manager and the members?

Solution

Our solution became a holistic approach to how one interacts with communities online.
First, we simplified the navigation, so conversations happen in a channel - just like Slack. Next, we added a matchmaker feature - allowing managers to pair like minded members with ease. Lastly, we focused on privacy. The entire app can run on any server and does not need to use Facebook. Amazon, Google or Apple to operate online. This protects the community from being blacklisted based on internal, private, conversations.