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MyGate Community Feed

Introduction

In most of the Indian cities, a large number of people reside in gated communities. Within a community there are people of similar interests, people from same villages or towns, people who could possibly help each other out etc. But there is no existing solution that could help residents to discover others. MyGate is perfectly positioned to solve for this need. Even though MyGate had a communication module, it was primarily used for official communication from Admins to residents. Residents were not able to leverage the platform to the rest of the society.

Based on the previous researches, a hypothesis was formed that adoption of communication could have a major positive impact on overall app engagement. With the expectation of more UGC being created on platform, the expected outcomes of this project were increased average session length and higher number of organic app launches.

So the Goals of this project can be summarised as

Community goals summary

Research

User interviews were conducted around the theme of social engagement as part of the overall App redesign (Documented as a case study). The research efforts specific to this project were mostly secondary in nature.

Understanding Resident Personas

Understanding Resident Personas

By correlating data on family size and years in residence with the above classification of users, it was evident that community engagement is directly correlated to rootedness and sense of belonging. This was further validated by the fact that owners tend to communicate and engage more with the fellow residents and tenants (<2 years) showed less interest in the same.

Resident personas insights

Decoding 'Sense of Belonging'

Another study listed out the following factors which contributes towards a sense of belongingness in the community: feeling at home in the community, satisfaction with the community, agreement with the values and beliefs of the community, feeling of belonging in the community, interest in what goes on in the community, feeling an important part of the community, and attachment to the community. This could manifest as observable social interaction and exchange of information, help or goods.

Another major factor that adds on this is the amount of influence a person has on the community. If they believe they have power to influence decision making or bring about change, they are more likely to feel integrated to the society.

Seeing this in MyGate's contest, residents should be enabled to:

Resident enablement summary

Neighbourhood - Beyond community

One of the major question we had was whether to limit the communication within community or open it to the entire neighbourhood creating a hyperlocal social network. A mapping of all personas in a neighbourhood and the value they have to offer to each other was done to understand the potential benefits of enabling such a network.

Neighbourhood Mapping

Some of the key observations from this mapping are as follows

Neighbourhood mapping observations

Some of the key observations from this mapping are as follows

Neighbourhood mapping observations comparison

The 'Cold Start' Problem

As MyGate was never a social engagement platform, one of the biggest challenge was that without content creation, it is difficult to get engagement and vice versa. To seed initial content existing communications were analysed to find themes that could generate interest

Synthesis

To start with the feed was designed to be an internal channel for the community. Buy& Sell, Homes listings from other societies would also be introduced in the feed, as more reach could benefit both the seller and buyer.

Based on the research few areas which require additional efforts were:

  • Content seeding - What are the themes, How frequent, Balance between seeded content and UGC
  • Nudges - Nudging users to post around events, festivals, popular themes etc
  • Content moderation - Preventing users from spamming or posting inappropriate content
  • Governance - Equipping society admins with the right tools
  • Feed Intelligence - Users seeing relevant content at the right time, Users affinity towards a particular post

Themes for Content Seeding & Nudges

As MyGate was never a social engagement platform, one of the biggest challenge was that without content creation, it is difficult to get engagement and vice versa. To seed initial content existing communications were analysed to find themes that could generate interest

Themes for Content Seeding & Nudges

Designing the feed components

Community feed has the following elements

Feed components
Anatomy of a card 1 Anatomy of a card 2 Anatomy of a card 3 Anatomy of a card 4 Anatomy of a card 5 Anatomy of a card 6

Pilot & Impact

The community feed was launched in Ahmedabad, Kolkata and selected cities of Bangalore in the pilot phase. The initial impact was positive with engagement metrics showing almost 2x jump in low/medium engagement societies.

MAU created content: 22.55% vs 8.35% pre-launch (+270%)

Viewed content: 67.46%; interacted: 49.37% (MAU: 116,310)

New creators in first month: 77.79%

Post per society: 0.33→1.71 low engaged, 14.1→18 medium, 139→215 high

Overall time spent increased: 96.29% low engaged, 26% medium, 4% high