September 10, 2004
Meetup.com Redesign Problems
I wrote the following to meetup.com recently, to critique and offer solutions to some serious issues I think were overlooked in their redesign:
I'm writing to comment on your new redesign and how I think it is affecting meetup.com adversely, and if not addressed could kill the momentum you have worked so hard for over the past few years.
While your redesign has given much more power to the individual groups to manage their own meetups, it now requires a level of attention and involvement that I think the majority of your users don't have or want. The beauty of the original meetup.com was its simplicity. All that had to be done is sign up. Notifications and reminders were sent automatically, and the level of participation needed by anyone in the group was simply clicking a button to RSVP and vote on venues. I'm sure the new design will provide a whole new level of controls to enable a part of your audience that craves this, but I would hazard a guess that "most" of your audience still expects the level of simplicity involved in the original design. Unfortunately, I think your new design doesn't support that anymore.
Continued...
Over the past few years, meetup.com has established a certain branding, consistency, and more importantly, an EXPERIENCE that was essentially thrown out the window with this new design. The two largest gaffes I can see in the new design is minimizing the importance of the actual meetup in the design of the page, and abandoning the established routine and experience of a meetup (Voting --> RSVP --> Reminder --> Meetup --> Critique) mostly initiated through email.
In the previous design, the meetup itself (time, date, location, etc.) was the primary and central focus of the design with all the other elements surrounding it. The emphasis on the actual meetup in the new design is completely lost, minimized to a small box on the right hand side of the screen in favor of "What's New". I realize the reminders are on the top of the page, but the emphasis on the meetup itself is really missing and needs to be addressed.
The larger problem is that the expected routine is now gone. Unless the organizer (who I bet is largely unaware the new responsibility) initiates them, the emails are not sent, which is exactly what happened with our last meetup. Since the pattern has been established over such a long period, to suddenly change it left many users in our group unaware and unsure what to do. When we went to the website to see what was going on, we were asked to login to a new site that was unfamiliar and try to find the meetup information, which was buried. That left a bad taste in my mouth, and prompted quite a bit of discussion at our last meetup. A quick solution to this is to reinstate the old email process (adjusting it where necessary to fit the new site), and then give each meetup the choice of using an organizer or letting the system do it for them. I think forcing the organizer role on each meetup is too much responsibility for most casual meetups and they will simply opt not to do it. The idea of these tools is to make the job easier, not harder.
In the past, I have written great praise for meetup.com and what it has done to help build live, physical communities where there was none before. I still believe meetup.com has this as their primary goal, in fact it is the first couple of sentences explaining meetup.com on your about page. I personally would like to continue advocating meetup, but the main point I always made was the incredible the ease of use, and now you've made my job more difficult.
Please make the necessary moves to quickly restore the emphasis on the meetup, and a choice to use a "simple" mode for organizing meetups that doesn't require and organizer role. In doing so you will help save your brand experience and many valued customers, including myself.
Sincerely,
Sean King
Update
I have received a response from meetup.com. Unfortunately, I don't think they even read my mail.
- Posted in:
- Web Design
Comments
1
Nathan:
Absolutely perfect response to the new changes. Add my name to the petition :)
Posted: September 10, 2004 at 3:44 PM MT
2
Eve Sander:
I agree. The new format is MUCH harder to use. It doesn't do what I need, whereas the other did, simply and clearly, and it's very counterintuitive. And if it's that bad for its new volunteer organizer (me), think how hard it's going to be for a rank-and-file member of our group.
In a way it's fortunate that so far I'm still the only would-be member of Adults with ADD in the whole country of Japan. But getting another ADDer to wrap his/her mind around the new format is going to be much, much harder than before.
Why did you have to change SO MUCH?? Especially I thought the venue voting and meeting on/off notification was so good.
Before, without an organizer person but with the old features, my would-be group had a bit of a chance. Now I feel like giving up.
Posted: September 12, 2004 at 4:04 AM MT
3
Randy:
I just found this out today and I agree 1 million percent. I'm gonna make this simple like the old site. The new one stinks, it's harder use, I don't have time and it killed my 2 meetup groups. Sean King, you explained it perfectly. And I agree, the Meetup representative who responded to your email did not read or just dodged and danced around your critiques.
Posted: September 29, 2004 at 4:17 PM MT