When the launch of the Business Edge Alumni Network was proposed I became involved in designing the brand identity for the group beginning with my research on the diverse community. This network is a place for industry professionals to leverage their collective aspirations and experience in advancing career growth within Canada. The network today is coexisting through the WhatsApp platform which entails several privacy issues. I believed, this privacy concern needed to be addressed, where the need to give personal information to make connections online could be prevented while the data could live on the encrypted servers. Most importantly, my goal was to integrate a community professionally moving away from the core definition of ‘social networking’. The overall focus of this inspired me to conceptualize a mobile app which I named ‘Groopy’.

Background

Social media has built a phenomenal character for users in a ‘social networking’ environment and allowing them easy transaction of personal data such as text, images, video, and opinions in general. My first concept banked upon connecting people outside of the typical ‘social networking’ definition, a professional network that is nurtured in exchanging views but those which are not meant to be ‘shared’ outside the realm of the network due to its structure of belonging only within the current stream of thought. Thus the goal of Groopy is to connect groups of people on an enterprise platform as illustrated below, and it’s an antithesis of a social network.

An overview of how Groopy differs from conventional Social Media.

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