To have a green thumb
The MTR Design team was approached by the guys from Keo digital who commissioned our team to build the new Landshare web site – a project we took quite personal after discussing the concept with them. A couple of tasteless supermarket salads later we got inspired and enthusiastic about joining those fellows and helping them out in the groove.
The concept for the website is to gather together three different types of users who can contribute to the online community in various ways. To cut the long story short – the idea is simple – those, who have land, are welcome to share it, those, who are looking for a farming plot, will find various offers on the site and those, who can give a hand in any way will have the opportunity to do it. So the key words, on which the community is supposed to blossom, are “sharing and collaboration”.
Grab your hoe!
Having Keo's main concept in mind, our team sketched out the first task – building a community platform. We tailored it to meet the commissioners’ requirements and supplied it with all the necessary attributes as users’ accounts, forums, newsletter, Q&A section, blogs and resource library. Besides all the “standard” modules, the community platform was equipped with a special “groups” feature, which brought the community concept to an entirely new level. It became a powerful tool for changing the local municipal policy. So our team had to make sure it worked properly and could dig even deeper for a change!
We were also responsible for developing the bespoke API for the Landshare iPhone app, which proved to be a winner!
Another good job on the field was establishing connections with Facebook, Google Maps and Twitter, as well integrating video streaming player.
Following days of hoeing and irrigation at the end of the day our team was ready to collect the harvest.
And what a harvest!
So far the website has more than 61 000 members in UK.
Landshare won the award for Best Green Use of Mobile Apps and Technologies for 2010.
Recently KEO Digital, the interactive arm of KEO Films, has licensed Landshare to their Australian and Canadian partners to continue its rapid growth. You can already find your fellow growers on http://landsharecanada.com/ and http://www.landshareaustralia.com.au/.
How did we handle it?
The MTR Design team was responsible for:
- Development of the HTML/CSS layouts
- Bespoke API which powers the Landshare iPhone app
- Third party API integration (Google maps, Facebook)
- CMS development
- Custom comunity modules (groups, events, forums, blogs, private messaging)
