Meetup

UX/UI concept project, creating a new feature for the Meetup app

The Client: Meet up is an online platform designed to organise online groups and events.

The Brief: Meetup have identified an, untapped audience of hesitant users, people who sign up for events but ultimately don’t attend. Our challenge was to design a feature that supports these users, helping them overcome their fears and anxieties, and convert them from passive sign-ups into confident, active participants.

Read the full case study on my Medium page

DURATION: 2 week sprint (April 2022)

TEAM: Part of a team of 4 UX designers

MY ROLE: I was involved in all stages of the end to end UX process, but was especially involved in the interviews, creating the prototypes, iterations and the presentation design.

TOOLS & SOFTWARE: Pen & paper, Google Forms, Figma, Zoom, Maze, Trello, Slack, Zoom

understanding the user and the market

Conducted competitive and comparative analysis, studying the features of 3 direct competitors and gathered inspiration from these platforms and other related sites.

Opportunity for Meetup to set themselves apart: Connecting members via events and helping reduce users anxiety before an event, which the competition do not provide.

Surveyed 12 and interviewed 4 users Learning that individuals tend to miss events they are interested in for 2 main reasons:

They are anxious about going alone
They have anxiety about their lack of knowledge regarding the possible content of the event

defining the problem

Based on our user research we built 2 personas with a primary persona, Jamie, who gets anxious attending events by himself.

Created a user journey and empathy map for Jamie to identify opportunities to lessen his pain points and formed his problem statement:

Jamie needs a familiar face to attend events with, because he feels anxious going alone.

The key ‘how might we’ became: HMW help Jamie to connect with another attendee before the event?

Testing and ideating solutions

Held a design studio, collaborating to form our solution.

We decided upon a ‘buddy’ system which appears on each event page and users can opt into. If they choose to 'buddy up,' they will be added to a group chat with other attendees before the event.

With the help of Meetup’s design system, we turned our sketches into a high - fidelity wireframe, ran usability tests including a Maze test and iterated on our prototype.

OUTCOME

Screen flow, starting from an Event page, showing the user joining the event and opting to ‘Buddy up.’

The user can find more info about ‘Buddy up’ in two locations and can opt in or out easily.

Screen flow showing the user getting a notification that they have been added to their Buddy group chat, going to the chat, and starting the conversation with the Buddy bot ice breaker question.

Watch the final prototype in action!

conclusion

Our brief was clear: transform passive users into active participants. Through our research, we personified this challenge in Jamie, a user who eagerly signs up for events but ultimately doesn’t attend due to the anxiety of not knowing anyone there.

Our solution, the “Buddy Up” feature, directly addresses this barrier by allowing Jamie to connect with other attendees ahead of the event. By giving him a familiar face to look out for, we help reduce the uncertainty that keeps him from showing up.

The feature integrates seamlessly into the existing Meetup experience, is intuitive to use, and offers flexibility by allowing users to easily opt in or out whenever they choose. It empowers hesitant users like Jamie to feel more confident, turning sign-ups into real attendance.

reflections

This project offered a valuable opportunity to apply agile ways of working within a UX context. Naturally, there were moments of differing opinions, but we made sure every voice was heard and resolved disagreements through open discussion and occasionally a vote.

I saw the value of staying organised with a Kanban board, setting clear timelines with a defined 'definition of done,' and holding daily stand-ups to maintain alignment. These practices kept the team moving smoothly and efficently.

Overall, it was an invaluable learning experience that prepared us well for working with a live client in the next project.