The MVP
Considering the endless possibilities and features that could be incorporated into a social-media app, the team at Neighbourhood decided to focus its time and resources on a specific set of functionalities with the highest ROI. The core of the app was, after all, to facilitate the process of asking for and receiving help in local communities.
With this MVP in place, we have created the foundation on top of which we plan on adding more features and perfect the existing ones. We are confident that the processes we’ve set up and the technical decisions we’ve made up until this point will allow us to continue development in a streamlined and efficient way.
Future plans
In-app chat system
In the limited scope of the MVP, communication between users is achieved by sharing a user’s email to the user who requested their help. This is not ideal and we would like to implement an in-app chat system that allows users to interact directly within the app, without having to use an external service.
Administration tools
In the future, we visualize Neighbourhood as a platform that allows for the complete administration of a local community. That would mean giving neighbourhood admins the ability to post announcements and to allow users to take a more active role in how their community is being managed.
In the case of Neighbourhoods that represent administrative entities, such as residential areas, we’d like to give users the option to pay their maintenance fees (and others) directly via the app. We’re also contemplating implementing a dashboard for each neighborhood that will show useful information, such as maintenance costs, repair costs, etc.
Native mobile version
In its current state, Neighbourhood is completely responsive on mobile phones and tablets. However, we would love to take the accessibility of the app to the next level by leveraging the advantages that a native app offers to its users. At the moment we are still debating between going completely native or building a PWA.
Enhancements
- Allow users to completely customize their profile, including their profile picture;
- Allow users to upload their own neighbourhood’s photo;
- Achieve greater frontend test coverage and write end-to-end tests;