Meetup Case Study

Summary

Meetup was launched in 2002 as an online service for bringing people together to share, learn, do, or just be. Users self-organize into groups and can be a member of multiple groups or RSVP for any number of events. Today, their service is used in at least 180 countries and comprises of over 225,000 groups. It’s been about a decade since I last used Meetup to join a hiking group, and they have undoubtedly revamped their site. Albeit the new site is more modern, I quickly found some experience issues that I think could greatly improve their performance.

Defining the Problems

There’s a lot going on with their home page. With a video playing at the top and one too many categories displayed in very bright and colorful images, it was hitting my senses in all the wrong way. Their images also read very young and kitschy. Organization was another issue. Important information like language choice was hidden at the very bottom. Repetitive information and choices like having categories in two different places on the home page was not necessary. There were also 24 general categories, which housed subjects that were easily shared or could crossover. I felt really overwhelmed at first sight. The biggest miss was the lack of a search bar or option. If you weren’t sure which category your topic would fall under, you’d end up making guesses and clicking into each category to search. 

user types & behavior

Meetups are based on topic of interest and only requires members to be at least the age of 18 years to sign up. There seems to be no collection of any demographic statistics. Type, focus and parameters of the group are at the discretion of the group administrator. However, I did learn:

1. Career/Business and Tech groups are the most common with the largest Meetup under the Tech category.

2. Socializing (aka meeting new people) groups tend to have the highest number of memberships. 

3. Fastest growing Meetups are fitness-related.

With the above information, I can safely say that the target market is 20-45yo and tech savvy.

research

I collected feedback from five users who visited the site. I asked them to do three specific things: search for a running group closest to their home, change the site language, and 

Goal

With user research, usability and comparative analysis, my key solution is to simplify the home page for users to easily navigate by condensing the categories, updating the images, reorganizing the navigation bar, and adding a search tool.