The Importance of Collaboration: does your app encourage it?

With the announcement of Pinterest’s new chat tool meaning that users can now create collaborative boards, and more social sharing sites making communication with other users their priority, it seems that collaboration is what app users of 2018 and beyond are looking for the most.

This collaborative nature blurs the lines between work and play, with people using such channels to inspire all areas of their life. With app users continually seeking out new, fresher ways to communicate, is your company doing enough to ensure collaboration is possible?

Sharing ideas

Since the early days of online chat rooms and MSN, it’s been clear that simple and quick ways of communicating with others are necessary. With the popularity of Facebook Messenger, Whatsapp and Slack, and with applications like Instagram introducing chat functionality over the coming weeks, it’s clear that for both work and play, collaboration is essential.

The question is, is there more your app could be doing to encourage conversation and collaboration? Facebook last year integrated a calendar function to Messenger, meaning that groups had the option to not only make plans within the app but add them into their calendars with one tap. It’s this kind of integration that is becoming more and more essential to keep app users happy.

Sharing feeds

Pinterest’s most recent move has been to enable a live feed within a board. At the start of 2018, Pinterest boasted 175 million regular active users. Most of those people use Pinterest to plan weddings, parties, baby showers and craft projects and, knowing this, Pinterest decided to lean-in to this audience need and edit their own software to make this function easier.

Now the app has introduced live feeds on shared boards where users can see the latest pins that have been added. Their chat functionality also means that app users can discuss their ideas and plans.

Listening to feedback

Pinterest is proving to be one of the most user-friendly apps around when it comes to listening to its audience and adjusting the usability of the app. In March of this year, it introduced nearly algorithm-free feeds, so that users only saw their friends’ pins. For most people this change is refreshing, so while Pinterest’s swing towards a focus on collaboration begs the question, 'can you do more to encourage it?', another lesson that could be learned from this development is, are you listening to your audience’s needs by creating software that performs these tasks better? If the answer is no, we can help you by building an app that encourages collaboration and communication for your business. Get in touch with us to find out more .