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Onome Osika

Engineering · 2023

MyAreaa

A community platform for people with shared interests, with group governance and a shared "village bank" wallet for dues, savings and donations.

MyAreaa on desktop and mobile. Browser windows show a community page with a member feed, a navigation sidebar and the Community Wallet panel with Add Money, Transfer and Withdraw actions; a phone shows a member profile and the My Pals list.

ChallengeMake shared money feel trustworthy inside a social product, where a confusing balance or a failed transfer costs more than a bug report.

Overview

MyAreaa is a JL13 Concepts product: exclusive communities that can be run democratically or by admins, with a community wallet for transparent group finances. It's built around the Ubuntu idea of collective support.

I've worked on it since 2023 as a senior frontend engineer: first on the original React web app, where I wrote most of the code, and then on the Next.js rebuild, alongside the product's marketing site.

From React to Next.js

The first version was a Create React App single-page app with Material UI. The rebuild moved to Next.js and TypeScript, with TanStack Query for server data, Zustand for client state, and Tailwind with Radix-based components for the UI.

Money UI: wallets and savings

Most of my work on the rebuild is in the money features, where clarity and correctness matter most:

  • Multi-wallet support: adding money, transfers, withdrawals, balances and wallet visibility, plus the shared community wallet.
  • Group savings: both ROSCA (members take turns receiving the pot) and ASCA (members save into a fund together), including accurate details of who receives each cycle.
  • RaiseMe fundraising: creating a wallet as part of setting up a fundraiser, and linking savings to it.
  • Transactions: correct calculations, clearly formatted debits and accurate status labels.
  • KYC: the identity verification flow members complete before using money features.

Communities

I built and fixed core community flows: invite codes, joining a community (including the edge case of joining one you're already in), member loading in savings groups, and the engagement score. I also made notifications more efficient and built the delete-account page.