Redesigning Meetup for better discovery

MEETUP

Redesigning Meetup for better discovery

In 2016, the Meetup app and brand were outdated and in need of a redesign. I worked with a small team to create a simplified version of the product, focusing on the core user experiences.

Role: v1.0: Product Design, Research (IC), v2.0 Design Direction, Product Strategy (Manager) Team: 3 Product Designers, 1 Content Strategist

THE CHALLENGE

Redesign & Rebrand

In addition to the Meetup product being outdated, our logo and visual identity were outdated too. While taking on both a redesign and rebrand at the same time was risky, our ability to modernize the product was inextricably linked to the visual design language.

We worked with Sagmeister & Walsh to do a complete overhaul of our brand. As is the case with working with external design teams, some elements of the rebrand needed to be refined to better fit our product design needs.

This is how things looked before (2015):

RESEARCH

Starting with members and organizers

We started the project like any other, interviewing users and understanding where the current experience was falling short. We decided to initially focus on members, because helping them find groups and events to connect with would ultimately help organizers succeed.

After distilling down themes we heard in research, looking at data, and getting direction on priorities, the team drafted some high level goals of the redesign.

User problems:

Organizers: difficulty getting enough RSVPs to host events
Organizers: need to figure out details before scheduling event, including knowing when their “regulars” are free to attend
Members: hard to know who will be attending events
Members: hesitation around attending events alone, and not sure how to reach out to organizers

GOALS & METRICS

Setting the direction

Because this was a large technical undertaking, we didn’t want to experiment too much with the core product experience. Rather, we set some goals that would build a strong foundation to iterate from.

Improve the discovery experience: help members discover the right fit events and groups for them.
Increase events created on mobile: make it easy and desirable for organizers to create, edit and post events from the app.
Simplify the UX: Mask the product complexity by streamlining the user experience.

GOAL 1

Improve the discovery experience

Many members join our platform with the general goal of meeting new people, and stumble across groups and events they didn’t know existed. When redesigning the app experience, we were careful to create circular pathways in the product so people could explore the breadth of our content.

Some people came for professional reasons, like learning to code, and ended up exploring areas of their personal development, like creative writing classes. We wanted to make it more likely that these discovery moments would happen.

GOAL 2

Increase event creation on mobile

Although organizers were using the mobile apps for features like messaging and checking people in, a large percentage of event creation was happening on the desktop web. This wasn’t a good sign when our growth was happening on apps. We needed to rethink the event creation experience for mobile.

On mobile, we learned organizers needed to be able to edit events gradually as they figured out details. To make creating events easier on the phone we added two key features:

Drafts that synced across apps and web
Ability to duplicate existing events

Both of these improvements led to significant lifts in events created on mobile.

GOAL 3

Simplify the UX

Another improvement we made when redesigning the apps was masking the product complexity that Meetup has accrued in the past 18 years. Some of the most complex areas of the product are those involving joining a group or attending an event, as there are multiple payment options, states, and configurations organizers can set.

We standardized actions, merged steps and generally detangled some of the product edge cases while smoothing out the front end visual design.