Welcome, Friends.
No start-up is agnostic to the shifting tide of the tech industry. Our concepts and brands can’t help but be influenced by the glut of information we digest on a regular basis. But how we evolve and change relative to that information is critical. We have to keep abreast of current trends to make sure our concept has legs without allowing the expanding court of public opinion to bully us into the kind of tinkering that betrays our original inspiration.
It’s been about six months since we began Nobly in earnest and we couldn’t be happier with our evolution and development. We’ve had our fair share of tweaks to our branding and vision but they’ve been well-reasoned and universally accepted by our core group of partners. So it’s with great pleasure that, for the first time, we share some of our initial design mock-ups publicly in our first round of NoblyLabs. Please feel free to provide any feedback and questions on here directly or to [email protected].
As we push the needle forward (with an eye towards an early fall beta release), we’ll continue to update you guys on our progress. We’re so excited.
Our Vision
It happens everyday. A moment of serendipity inspires us to do something amazing. Someone writes a note for a co-worker who’s having a bad day. A cheery commuter pays the toll for a handful of cars behind him. A Samaritan with a few extra hours on a weekend rakes his neighbor’s yard. Every act of kindness, no matter how small, is a blessing. It is bastion of good in our increasingly crazy modern lives.
Our goal is to use technology to document these deeds as they happen and encourage others to perform acts of goodwill on a more regular basis. We believe in the intrinsic good of human beings and think that we can help catalyze that good using a fun and collaborative cell phone application.
The app revolves around the “pay-it-forward” principle. Using both physical assets (NoblyCards) and digital functionality, we aim to create a network for engaged citizens to perform and record acts of kindness. Our end goal is to be the default platform for the inspiration and registration of goodwill.
Home Screen
This is our first crack at the home screen for Nobly. The functionality here is fairly self-explanatory. We offer three options to sign up or in to the app: Google, Facebook or e-mail.
Deed Feed
After login, you land on a feed page that allows you to act as a goodwill voyeur, checking out Nobly deeds posted by people you follow in real-time.
Registering a Deed
In addition to checking out acts of goodwill by others in the Deed Feed, you’ll be able to register your own deeds on a “Create Deed” screen pictured above. (Please note that the design here is still in its infancy and will develop over the course of the next few months.)
NoblyChains
If you’ve been paying attention, you know by now that the “pay-it-forward” concept figures prominently into our plan for Nobly. As such, all deeds will be a part of a NoblyChain, or a string of good deeds.
These chains will be perpetuated one of two ways:
NoblyCards
NoblyCards are physical cards, each with its own QR code, that transfer between people whenever a good deed is performed. They will serve to catalyze the adoption of Nobly in the real world using a tangible asset. For example:
Ahmed is at a local coffee shop where he notices that Tristan has forgotten her wallet and can’t pay for her coffee. Using the NoblyCard currently in his possession, Ahmed documents the good deed (using a QR code) and passes the card off to Tristan (along with a short spiel about why he did so and what the card represents). Tristan, intrigued, does a little research and pockets the card for now. She gets home a couple nights later and notices that the paint on the railings lining the steps leading up to her neighbors’ front door has begun to chip. Remembering that she has an extra can of navy blue paint in her garage, she does twenty minutes of touch-up work. Good as new. She registers her deed, writes a small note telling them what she’s done and introducing them to the card and leaves it in an envelope in their mailbox. They find it, do a little research and join the cause. So on and so forth.
While Nobly Cards are an essential part of our go-to-market strategy, they won’t be necessary in order to register deeds. Users will be able to register individual deeds using the “Create Deed” functionality. However, in keeping with the “pay-it-forward” concept, these deeds will be connected using a deed notification system. Each time a new deed is created, we’ll trigger a push to another user in an effort to start a new NoblyChain.
(More on this functionality next month.)
So, to recap the functionality flowchart:
So that’s it for now. Excuse us while we retreat back into the Lab to continue evolving our labor of love. If you haven’t yet, head over to our home page and sign up for the beta. You won’t be sorry, and neither will those who you’ll have the opportunity to affect positively once we get this thing in the wild.
Our best,
TeamNobly