How could we increase engagement and improve the overall usability of Meetup?
Meetup is a platform for finding and building local communities. People use Meetup to meet new people, learn new things, and find support.
We found that users struggle to build real connections by joining events.
How could we increase engagement and improve the overall usability of Meetup? We worked on the redesign to extend the current Discussion feature to foster more organic engagement between organizers and users.
We conducted user interviews, looked into app reviews and did a competitor analysis to see the key issues that should be focused on.
We gathered and organized app reviews that reflect current users’ struggles with the app.
We conducted user interviews with 6 individuals who are current Meetup users and would like to utilize the app more.
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 solved by the app
From user interviews and app reviews, we put down users’ feedbacks and grouped them into an affinity diagram.
We identified four key pain points from user interviews, app reviews and competitive analysis. We will then decide on one problem to solve for our redesign project.
Users struggle to build solid connections with the group and members, while organizers struggle to retain current members in the long run. We decided to work on a DISCUSSION feature redesign that improves current engagement within the Meetup app.
design a discussion feature for new group members to communicate before and after joining an event to build solid connection between people in the community?
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 competitors’ features and brainstormed potential features that could enhance users’ engagement while using the discussion features.
We consolidated our ideas and decided to work on the following 5 improvements:
For members
⭐︎Add other content medium including photos and videos
⭐︎Search discussion posts by keywords
⭐Mark discussion posts and consolidate all of them in profile section
For organizers
⭐Start a poll
⭐Set discussion on top
Use cases:
1. view discussion area
2. start a discussion
3. mention members in a discussion
4. instant response
5. search by keywords
6. pin a discussion
7. set top message (organizer)
8. vote/pull (organizer)
Task flow
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
1. Add button in quick response section is confusing
2. Users found it’s hard to smoothly head to all discussion
3. When removing pinned discussion, the card disappear immediately which doesn’t allow users to make mistakes
4. Search results need clearer visualization
5. It’s confusing to add images for polling, and users might need more polling options
6. The visualization of topped discussion card makes users feel there was something wrong
Talking to users is very tricky, it's not that easy to set a vibe to make them feel comfortable and willing to think back the situation they had in details. A warm up is helpful to get the interviewer and interviewees closer to talk. Do some research in advance, such as app reviews, search stories in forums is helpful to understand as many scenarios as possible. This will help to understand and dig what interviewee's subtext.
Working in a team is also tricky. I'm not sure what my role would be in the very beginning (since it's more than 3 people in the group). Do anything you think might be helpful (always ask for opinions) will help you figure out what the role you can be.
@alice.chen 2022
