Meetup.com: Designing Features
Feature Design Project
Team/Role: 3 UX designers. All members were involved in research, creating screens and testing.
Duration: 1 week
Background
Meetup is used to help organize like-minded individuals. Meetups are are now budgeting for larger venues like Bars, Restaurants or WeWork spaces to hold events.
Feature Design
Incorporate a new feature that would allow Meetup organizers to connect with venues in order to host their events.
What PROBLEM were we looking to solve?
Meetup Group Organizers need to search for venues on their own. Likewise, businesses that would like to host a Meetup need to find and reach out to organizers directly.
How might we help connect Meetup organizers to willing hosts in order to simplify and streamline the process for both parties?
Discover & Define
User Interviews
Goal: Feedback from Meetup group organizers.
Focus: Pain-points of organizers and issues that venues encounter when hosting.
Numbers: 39 responses to the survey screener. 13 qualified persons interviewed. 7 group organizers and 6 venue owners.
Interview Findings » 2 Host Personas
Large and small venues have mostly the same issues with hosting Meetups but each bear their own specific problems as well.
Key Takeaways For Organizers:
Searching venues takes a lot of time.
Transparency is a big issue.
Communication with the host is key.
Key Takeaways for Hosts:
Meetups not as committed to paying/showing up as corporate events were.
Communication was also a challenge.
Larger venues have revenue quotas, since there is less incentive for Meetup members to show up to the event, they tend to pass on those bookings.
Small venue owners insisted they need to know their client, issues had arisen in the past with groups being rowdy or unruly.
Revised Problem
How might we help connect Meetup organizers to well-reviewed willing hosts and connect hosts with verified and committed Meetup organizers?
Design & Testing
Moscow
Priority for features such as search functions, chats, and reviews.
• Difficult to find space → Search function & venue reviews.
• Transparency on price → Price filter in venue search.
• Communication → Chat ability.
• Venue profit guarantee→ Deposit receipt from groups.
• Professional/trustworthy groups → Meetup group reviews.
USABILITY testing 1 RESULTS
• 3 out of 4 searched for a home page/dashboard.
• Extensive navigating to find reviews in 2 out of 4 testers.
Home page: Users were looking for a central page to navigate to and from. Each user clicked around the navigation bar, clicked the “M" tab bar button and also the profile button, expecting to find a home page.
NEW Navigation
Current Meetup tab bar was too confusing for users. For round 2 of testing the tab bar was changed to become more intuitive. Switching Accounts moved into Profile Page.
usability testing 2 results:
Though much progress was made with changes to the tab bar, users made different navigational choices in other parts of the test compared to Round 1. The following issues needed to be addressed in the next iteration:
Issue 1 — Searching for organizers (5 out of 5 did not use the "Search" icon in the tab bar like they did in initial tests)
Issue 2 — Locating booking requests (3 out of 5 could not find booking requests as easily as before as they used the “Events” button in the homepage exclusively and did not check "Reminders" like they did in the initial tests)
DeliverY - InVision Prototype
Conclusion and next steps:
Make the "Search" button more prominent on the home page — In the second round of testing users didn't use the tab bar search and gravitated toward the home page instead.
Add more detail on Venues and Groups — many users wanted to see more detail on both the venues and groups during their searches.
Add more detail on collecting and sending Deposits — users wanted to see how much their deposits amounted to; will work on a detailed invoice page prior to sending/receiving deposits.
The feedback from interviewees and testers proved there is a real need for this new feature on Meetup.com's app.