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Project Overview
Inbox empowers users to have conversations, instead of just sending messages. Traditional messengers send text or pictures to describe what you want to say, but Inbox creates chat experiences that allow you to share how you feel and express it creatively.
If there isn’t a perfect emoji for your mood, draw your own! Or transform selfies into fun drawings that capture all of your personality. When the conversation gets serious, show a friend that you’re listening with the presence indicator. These features mixed with a clean and intuitive design mean better conversations for you and your friends.
Organisation
Team
Maher Janajri - CEO
Hani Shabsigh - Engineering Lead
Zachary Smith - Android Developer
Bob Law - iOS Developer
Yousef Janajri - Back-end Developer
Stefan Haacker - QA
Rafa Maya - Product Lead
Alla Novick - Product
Jordi Navarro - Design
Chris Wang - PMO
Anna Chavey - Marketing
Chris Melberger - Marketing
Project Brief
Inbox Messenger's new and innovative drawing experience brings conversation to life and has quickly become the app’s most engaging feature. Users are constantly giving feedback on the app's amazing ability to enable creative expression in a medium that has historically been relegated as a utility.
At it's core, Inbox provides a fun, fast and reliable messaging service, yet it's most differentiating drawing feature empowers users to truly personalize their experience by transforming their selfies (drawing on pictures) or drawing their own emojis (drawing on canvas). Expression is at the core of the whole Inbox live chatting experience.
Our team aims to nurture creativity and imagination by tapping into its users inner-artist with tools that are powerful yet, accessible. With the popularity of drawing we saw an amazing opportunity to empower fellow community members by collecting and curating amazing creations on our website in the hope of inspiring users’ imagination - besides, creativity is contagious!
If in the few minutes a day that people interact with our app, we can help express themselves creatively when otherwise they would not - we’ve accomplished something special.
Inbox Messenger currently has over 100,000 monthly active users worldwide and has been praised for its creative and fun messaging features (namely drawing, and the ability to unsend messages) and has been recognized for its minimalist-style app design. The app’s user base is active and expanding, with thousands of users sending messages daily.
Project Need
Inbox started as a messaging app focused on privacy. We initially thought that the explosion of smartphones and texting had trivialized something really personal, our conversations with friends and family. Trusting our screens to hold some of our most intimate exchanges felt scary, so we developed a messaging app with features that put users in control of their privacy. We learned quickly that privacy, although it seemed important, wasn’t much on users’ minds.
Surprised by this outcome, we took a closer look at the messaging landscape to see what we might have missed. We found that even though the messaging landscape is cluttered with tons of different choices, none of them really give you the personal and intimate experience you have when you talk to someone face to face. Messaging inevitably seems more transactional. No wonder privacy wasn’t such a big deal!
Inbox now aims to fill that gap. Our features and UI are designed to feel accessible and fun, so users can feel comfortable to get creative and expressive. We are building simple tools that empower users to tap into their inner artists and express themselves more fully. One of the most important tools we are building is our community. On our site we crowd source drawings made in the app to inspire users that may feel like they aren’t artistic enough or are short an idea. It’s these personal touches that we are excited to bring into messaging.
User Experience
By messaging their friends, users utilize and enjoy Inbox’s key features - drawing, presence and unsend.
In the chat users can send text, audio, photo, video, or drawings! Inbox's core and differentiating drawing feature empowers users to personalize their experience by transforming their selfies (drawing on pictures) or drawing their own emojis (drawing on canvas).
When friends join your chat the presence indicator tells users, “Anna is here”. Texting often feels impersonal, but presence is a simple and compelling way to convey a sense of empathy and show your friend that you are actively “listening” to their messages. Along with presence, the live activity indicator is a fun way to see whether your friends are currently typing a message, recording audio, making a video, or drawing something special.
One core feature that continues to hook users is the ability to unsend messages. Inbox-ers can delete messages from both their phone and recipients’ phones - simply hold and press a message for the option to ‘Unsend’.
While designing the app, it was important to maintain fundamental elements of native app design for both iOS and Android platforms in order to maximize intuitiveness and ease of use. We stripped away excess clutter that users may find distracting in order to focus on the most important aspect of messaging - your conversations. We paired that minimalism with some colors and that pop for a fun and fresh experience.
Project Marketing
Inbox Messenger's marketing strategy focuses on two main objectives: growing an engaged userbase and building a reputable brand. Our goal is to tell a story that current and potential users can relate to, while illustrating how Inbox can better help them express themselves!
Growth is also a key part of any marketing strategy and after months of experimentation, the most impactful strategies for us have yielded the highest number of engaged users over time at the lowest cost. Distribution partnerships, community management and social content creation have been strategies we've leveraged to help grow the app while at the same time attract and retain loyal and passionate Inbox-ers!
Brand recognition is just as important as it is not only relevant to our users, but to our non-users as well - for example, investors, journalists, talent, etc. - people who may not necessarily be our target market. We've learned to associate the brand with influencers in particular industries and social platforms, as well as celebrities in pop culture, music and film. This has really helped us develop the Inbox Messenger brand into one of youthful and creative culture.
Project Privacy
We consider privacy to be sacred when it comes to building a tool that people entrust with something as personal and intimate as their messages - we believe users deserve to feel like they can trust the tool delivering their messages and comfortable in their messaging experience. Everything from our back-end servers to our app’s features have been designed with the user’s comfort in mind.
Our data is stored on secure servers where they are held privately (meaning we can’t access your confidential data - password, messages, pictures, etc.) which means your content is safe.
From a user experience perspective, Inbox Messenger provides you with Unsend, a powerful way to control what you sent to friends and better manage your privacy.
Best App Startup
Exactly as it states - we're looking for the best startup projects. Startup projects need to be newly emerging, less than 5 million users and less than 3 years old.
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