Requirements

1. The opportunity

People have spare time that is often filled with activities like watching TV, playing video games or browsing on Facebook and the like. At the same time people ignore problems in their community that could quickly be improved with a bit of joint effort with each other. It’s generally accepted that people’s sense of well-being rises when they are involved in voluntary activities in their community and with face-to-face interaction with people in their community. Their self-confidence rises, they feel good about making a difference and they make new real-life friends. We are making it easy for individuals to participate in their local community using whatever spare time they want. The volunteers benefit and the community benefits. Our app will:

• improve the resilience of a community’s citizens to face economic, environmental and social challenges
• improve people’s enjoyment, navigation of and access to their neighbourhood
• bring disparate populations of the neighbourhood together
• engage and inspire residents and visitors alike
• catalyse or contribute to an ongoing revitalising of underused spaces or objects.

2. Architecture overview

3. Product specification

3.1. Home screen

3.1.1. Present a simple list of things to do near you.

3.1.2. There is the opportunity for anyone to add something they would like to see done to the list.

3.1.3. This ‘hyper-local’ list should federate volunteering opportunities from all individuals, charities and commercial organisations that have things to do in that location.

3.2. Hyperlocal federated search with notifications

3.2.1. By default, list all volunteering opportunities in order of those that are (1) close to you and (2) soon.

3.2.2. A filter could be applied to show only events with certain keywords like “gardening or outdoor” to further narrow down event proposals.

3.2.3. Once a user has a list matching their interests they can check a notify box to receive notifications when new volunteering opportunities are proposed that would appear in that list. This allows our app to keep volunteers abreast of new opportunities without having to come to our website all the time to check for new proposals.

3.3. Social media conversations

3.3.1. As well as the hyper-local list of proposed events we are a platform for conversations about proposed events by identifiable individuals and organisations.

3.3.2. Logging in with your Facebook identity enables your involvement with an event to be shared on your social media news feed and for you to see and interact with the full content of our app from within Facebook. This increases the visibility of our app as a source of fun things to do and also encourages volunteers to share the specific good things that they are doing with their friends, further promoting their feel-good return from making a difference.

3.3.3. It also benefits from login with a Twitter ID, Qzone ID, Sina-Webio ID, etc..., enabling your involvement with an event to be shared on other social media news feeds.

3.3.4. It can operate stand-alone with a website user login and notifications by email.

3.3.5. SMS, iOS and Android app notifications.

3.4. Social Rating - how much great stuff have you contributed?

3.4.1. A reputation build in the community will, like eBay feedback ratings, indicate trustworthiness of individuals to help others assess if someone is likely to turn up or let them down. Your social rating will increase through your attendance to the events, the events you organise and contributions you make.

3.4.2. Building your reputation in the community is part of the “gamification” of the app. A successful model of social games on Facebook is Farmville, essentially encouraging 30M people every month to do virtual good deeds for each other in a virtual world:

Similarly, our goal is to inspire people to actually do real good things with real people in the real world.

3.5. Analytics

3.5.1. The following actionable metrics are metered in Google Analytics:

5.3.1.1. Acquisitions (referral mechanisms are distinguished and recorded as best as possible)

1. new visitor's first visit to app
2. search for events at a specific location (locations are recorded too)

5.3.1.2. Activations

1. Views details of an event
2. login with facebook
3. votes 'like' for an event
4. sends an event to a friend

5.3.1.3. Retention (referral mechanism is recorded as best as possible)

1. returning visitor coming back
2. visitor returning more than one time in one month

5.3.1.4. Referral

1. new user from a friend's like of an event
2. new user from a friend's new event posting story
3. new user who was explicitly sent an event by a friend

5.3.1.5. Revenue, which we define as social good contributed. Locations of these events are recorded.

1. comments on an event
2. submits a new event
3. attends an event

5.3.1.6. Pain, which is where we have to spend time moderating behaviour

1. event created by them is removed by a moderator
2. comment from them is removed by a moderator

5.3.2. We track the journeys of these cohorts distinctly:

1. individual volunteers
2. institutions & organisations (eg local councils and charities)
3. local businesses

3.5.3. Offline event metrics (such as a comment or new event composed on an underground train) are also recorded as soon as the event itself is synchronised.