Meetup is a platform for finding and building local communities. People use Meetup to meet new people, learn new things, and find support. How to improve the user experience for Meetup mobile app? How could we increase engagement and improve the overall usability?
We worked on the redesign to extend the current Discussion feature to foster more organic engagement between organizers and users.
Desktop Research
Qualitative Research
Research synthesis
User profile
Problem Statement
Competitor analysis
Ideation
Solution
Usability Testing
Use Case
Wireframe
Iteration: Final Design
Before defining the problem, we as a team conducted usability test for the current site and further conducted interviews to collect both qualitative in order to map out the pain points.
We conducted the usability test with 5 participants to find how users interact with the Meetup app and find out their user experience by giving them the following tasks:
1. Finding a group to follow
2. RSVP to 2/3 events
3. Tracking events that are RSVP’ed
4. Cancelling 1 event
5. Checking what groups/events that have joined
All the participants are frequent mobile users aging from 24 - 35 and had limited experience using Meetup.
We gathered and organized app reviews that reflect current users’ struggles with the app.
The interviews were conducted with 6 individuals who are active Meetup users and would like to discover more potential problems with the app.
We asked questions about:
• Their current habits using the app
• Their experience with other platforms for groups and events
• Their expectation of the app before joining groups
• Their overall user experience with the app and what needs do they have that are not served by the app
From user interviews and app reviews, we put down users’ feedbacks and grouped them into an affinity diagram. They are grouped into 6 main insights.
From user interviews and app reviews, we put down users’ feedbacks and grouped them into an affinity diagram. They are grouped into 6 main insights.
We created two personas - the attendees and the hosts - based on our research process and they will help us to empathize with the users during the design process.
When I join a new group, I want to communicate more with members in the group, so I can build solid connection between people in the community. (the Attendees)
Through affinity mapping and synthesis process, we came down to the pain point of missing engagement. Users struggle to build solid connections among the group and members, while organizers struggle to retain current members in the long run. Within Meetup, Discussion board is a crucial place for people to post and exchang ideas before and after joining a group or event.
The current discussion feature allows the organizers and users to post in text format. Users are also able to reply in mere text format.
We looked at not only direct competitiors’ features, but also other platforms that foster engagement and build communities for inspiration. We brainstormed potential features that enhance engagement while serving Meetup’s core mission of building communities.
We consolidated our ideas by brainstorming and creating Ideation matrix and decided to work on the following 6 improvements:
For members
1. ︎Mention someone in the group on discussion post
2. ︎Instant response on discussion posts
3. ︎Search discussion posts by keywords
4. Pin discussion posts and consolidate all of them in profile section
For organizers
5. Start a poll
6. Set discussion post on top
We structured the user flow to clearly show the interactions between detailed funtions in the discussion area.
By paper prototyping, we sketched out what will be shown on and how it will be layouted on each interfaces.
By paper prototyping, we sketched out what will be shown on and how it will be layouted on each interfaces.
To validate the usability of our designs, we conducted moderated usability testing with 8 participants who will use the app both as an organizer and a member. The tests enabled us to uncover design flaws and iterate further.
The test was focused on the key flows. Below are the flows we prompted:
Members:
1. Start a new discussion and mention someone in the group
2. Pin a discussion and find all your pinned discussion
3. Search discussion by key words
Organizer:
1. Start a poll
2. Set a discussion to top
• 6/8 users mentioned that the red outline box for the top post looks alerting and make them feel something is wrong
• 5/8 users suggest they feel lost after searching something that have no results
• 6/8 users find the voting result confusing and hard to tell the results
• 5/8 users suggest that they are afraid to pin or unpin posts by accident
The usability tests enabled us to find the problems in the initial designs and we made improvement accordingly for all usability issues.
Problem1: Set discussion on top
Problem 2: Search a discussion by keywords
Problem 3: View poll results
Problem 4: Pin a discussion
View Discussion
The discussion area is more functional for attendees to communicate information with other members and hosts.
Instant Reaction
Members can respond easily to each discussion with a click on stickers. The most popular ones are ranged on the top of the list.
Pin a discussion
Members can pin the discussions they are following, and find all the pins on their profile page. The discussion page also has a filter for pins.
Mention members
Members can mention other attendees and hosts when they start a discussion.
Search a discussion
Members are able to search the topics they are interested in by keywords which can save their time and energy when they have a specific goal in the group.
Start a poll & Vote
Polling allows hosts to gather opinions from attendees when making event decisions.
Top a discussion
The hosts can top the discussion they want to promote in the group.
• Working in a team is a double-edged sword, it means people will have different voices but it pushes us to look at the problem more objectively and produce more effective solution.
• You don’t necessarily find the problem from your first research and that’s ok, keep researching and talking to users.
• Usability and iteration is key to discovering issues and producing usable products.
• Users’ feedback are important but designers have to make the judgement which ones are the priority for the design work.