MeetUp (A part of KhulKe)
Introduction
Embarking on the creation of Meet, a Videotelephony software, emerged from the evolution of Khul Ke—an app tailored specifically for Indian users, amalgamating various social media platforms to strongly cater to the Indian audience. The quest to develop a comprehensive version of Khul Ke led to the realisation that something essential was missing, particularly in the realm of video calling. This realisation sparked the inception of MeetUp, a journey driven by the vision to enhance connectivity through real-time, multidirectional video and audio streaming for person-to-person meetings over the internet. MeetUp serves as a video communication platform, allowing users to engage in remote video conferencing through cloud-based computing. Positioned as a Software as a Service (SaaS), it offers a user-friendly and seamless platform for conducting online meetings, supporting mobile collaboration, and facilitating video conferencing with ease and convenience.
Problem/Statement
Users encounter navigational challenges within the MeetUp app due to its current user interface (UI). The technical aesthetics and unclear labelling contribute to a cumbersome experience, making it arduous for users to locate specific features. This lack of clarity significantly hampers the overall user experience.
MeetUp plays a pivotal role in various sectors, including education, corporate, and entertainment, serving as a platform for meetings and classes. However, the seamless management of work across multiple platforms poses a significant challenge. The current workflow involves conducting meetings on one platform, handling documents on another, and coordinating meeting invitations through email or by sharing links on WhatsApp. Joining a meeting in this process is notably time-consuming. Our approach began with a comprehensive exploration of MeetUp, actively engaging with its features and exploring different subscription plans to cater to diverse user requirements.
During our assessment, we observed the effectiveness of features, evaluated ease of navigation, and considered the overall user experience. This internal evaluation laid the groundwork for an in-depth competitor analysis, where we examined alternative platforms to understand their offerings and operational dynamics, particularly in terms of features.
The data collected from a survey, including responses from 56.4% students, 7.7% educators, and 35.9% business professionals, guided our subsequent actions. Conducting 10 detailed interviews provided deeper insights into user experiences. Taking a holistic approach, we distilled these insights through affinity mapping to identify key pain points.
Key pain points that emerged include the time-consuming process of creating and inviting participants to meetings, especially when compared to more straightforward apps like Google Meet. Users expressed a preference for the flexibility and simplicity offered by communication platforms like WhatsApp and Instagram. Additionally, a significant number of users reported managing work across multiple platforms, with educators resorting to methods like sharing Google Drive folders or using platforms like Google Classroom for assignment submissions. These insights form the basis for addressing user needs and enhancing the overall user experience of MeetUp.
To gain further perspective, we initiated interviews with both our existing customer base and potential clients, engaging in discussions with a diverse range of individuals. I systematically organized the observations and assumptions gathered during telephonic interviews, while also consolidating insights obtained from various customer-facing teams.
Learnings
In the narratives shared by customers, there often exists a significant gap between their expectations and the realities of the world. It's within these gaps that potential opportunities emerge, providing a chance to better serve our customers. While maintaining continuous communication with our customers, we understand that these opportunities are dynamic and continually evolving. Despite our strong desire to please the customer, it's essential to acknowledge that attempting to address every problem space can be detrimental to the overall product.
To systematically evaluate these opportunities, we utilize a method called opportunity tree mapping. This approach enables a thorough assessment of each opportunity, considering the underlying constraints and ensuring a focused and strategic approach to enhancing the product.
After conducting extensive research that gathered diverse pain points and user preferences, we took the next step of creating personas. This allowed us to precisely understand the unique needs of each user group. Subsequently, we formulated insightful "How might we" questions to stimulate ideation and foster innovation.
Personas:
1) Education (Teachers/Students):
Primary Need:
Simplified and enhanced management.
Goals:
In our continuous pursuit of improvement, there exists a collective longing to enhance the user interface, ensuring it becomes not only more engaging but also user-friendly for all participants. Students have distinctly expressed their yearning for a more efficient means of accessing study resources, aiming to reduce the necessity of navigating through numerous WhatsApp groups. On the educators' side, a deliberate effort is in motion to simplify the daily sharing of links, steering away from conventional messaging apps like WhatsApp. Furthermore, teachers actively seek alternatives to the frequent use of calls or video calls for delivering feedback or suggesting changes in projects and assignments. This shared vision underscores our steadfast commitment to shaping a more effective and user-centric educational experience.
In our continuous pursuit of improvement, there exists a collective longing to enhance the user interface, ensuring it becomes not only more engaging but also user-friendly for all participants. Students have distinctly expressed their yearning for a more efficient means of accessing study resources, aiming to reduce the necessity of navigating through numerous WhatsApp groups. On the educators' side, a deliberate effort is in motion to simplify the daily sharing of links, steering away from conventional messaging apps like WhatsApp. Furthermore, teachers actively seek alternatives to the frequent use of calls or video calls for delivering feedback or suggesting changes in projects and assignments. This shared vision underscores our steadfast commitment to shaping a more effective and user-centric educational experience.
Frustrations:
Homework and assignment submissions often experience delays due to the challenges students encounter in locating Google Drive links and folders. The struggle to remember teacher feedback and suggested changes poses a significant hurdle, impacting the learning process. Moreover, students face difficulties in effectively tracking completed, pending, and submitted work, which can result in organizational issues. The pervasive perception of the interface as overly technical further contributes to the overall complexity. This underscores the pressing need for the development of a more user-friendly and intuitive system to address these concerns and streamline the educational workflow for enhanced efficiency.
2) Corporate:
Primary Need:
Increased efficiency at work.
Goals:
The user community is vocal about their aspirations for an improved meeting experience, articulating specific requests that underscore their priorities. A primary concern is the simplification of the meeting joining process, emphasizing the importance of a seamless entry into sessions. Additionally, there is a notable demand for features such as a "Raise hand" button and an optimized participant invitation system to enhance the overall interactive aspect. Users are also expressing a desire for the ability to rename recordings, aiming to facilitate a more straightforward identification process. Furthermore, affordability is a key consideration, with users emphasizing the importance of accessible subscription plans to cater to a diverse user base. These user-driven insights collectively pave the way for foundational enhancements aimed at elevating the functionality and accessibility of the platform.
Frustrations:
- Encounter time-consuming meeting creation and link-sharing processes.
- Experience a lengthy meeting joining process involving opening a browser before accessing MeetUp.
- Necessitate the use of different note-taking apps during meetings.
- Frequent account switching for freelancers working across multiple clients and companies during meetings.
How Might We Questions:
In our pursuit of app enhancement, what strategies can we employ to boost efficiency and overall management within the application?
When it comes to the meeting joining process, how can we streamline it to make it more straightforward and user-friendly?
Regarding the user interface, what innovative approaches can be adopted to enhance its user-friendliness and informativeness?
In creating purposeful spaces, how can we effectively establish distinct zones within the app that cater to the varied purposes of different user groups?
These "How might we" inquiries serve as our guiding compass during ideation, directing our efforts towards resolving identified pain points and addressing the diverse needs of our user base in a more nuanced and user-centric manner.
Ideations & Itterations
The ideation phase involved numerous iterations for each screen, presenting a significant challenge in simplifying features, altering the UI, adjusting colors. Experimentation with colors was a key aspect of this process. However, the objective was not to establish a new brand identity; instead, we adhered to the existing one while playing with hues, tints, and shades.
The ideation phase involved numerous iterations for each screen, presenting a significant challenge in simplifying features, altering the UI, adjusting colors. Experimentation with colors was a key aspect of this process. However, the objective was not to establish a new brand identity; instead, we adhered to the existing one while playing with hues, tints, and shades.
Our primary focus during this phase was on crafting screens from the perspective of joiners, ensuring a user-centric approach. Although various additional elements were created for features introduced in the app.
Product goal
Empower customers with budget-friendly tools designed for seamless engagement. Our offering includes plans catering to Premium Khul Ke users, Khul Ke users, and Non-Khul Ke users. The Premium Plan for Khul Ke users encompasses a comprehensive set of features such as joining any meeting, screen sharing, unlimited attendees, team chat, mail and calendar integration, reminders, simulcasting on social media platforms, creating meetings of 45 minutes or more, recording with a maximum resolution of 720p, multilingual transcription, and an unlimited number of meetings per day.
Empower customers with budget-friendly tools designed for seamless engagement. Our offering includes plans catering to Premium Khul Ke users, Khul Ke users, and Non-Khul Ke users. The Premium Plan for Khul Ke users encompasses a comprehensive set of features such as joining any meeting, screen sharing, unlimited attendees, team chat, mail and calendar integration, reminders, simulcasting on social media platforms, creating meetings of 45 minutes or more, recording with a maximum resolution of 720p, multilingual transcription, and an unlimited number of meetings per day.
For Khul Ke users, the plan includes similar features with slight variations, such as the ability to create two meetings of up to 45 minutes each, recording at a maximum resolution of 480p, and transcription available only in English. Non-Khul Ke users can also enjoy a robust set of features, including joining any meeting, screen sharing, unlimited attendees, team chat, mail and calendar integration, reminders, and simulcasting on social media platforms.
Ensuring a seamless and extended collaborative experience, our tools prioritise secure connectivity, cross-device functionality, and visual alignment with the core product. The user interface combines a conversational yet functional design with an enhanced focus on visual elements, elevating the overall user experience.
Primary Features:
Primary Features:
Secure Meeting Rooms
Easy Meeting Creation
Sharable Meeting Links
Internal Chat
Mobile Support
Private Meeting Rooms
Screen Sharing
Video quality would be auto-adjusted according to the user’s bandwidth
Rooms could be password protected for select entry of the users
Another important feature we implemented is a sign language detector in Meet to recognize hand actions and convert them into text. This innovation enables active participation in meetings for individuals who may be unable to hear or speak, fostering inclusivity. This feature not only benefits those who use sign language but also facilitates communication for those unfamiliar with sign languages. For instance, someone who cannot speak can effortlessly conduct a lecture by having their gestures translated into real-time text, eliminating the need to manually type out the entire classroom lecture.
Another important feature we implemented is a sign language detector in Meet to recognize hand actions and convert them into text. This innovation enables active participation in meetings for individuals who may be unable to hear or speak, fostering inclusivity. This feature not only benefits those who use sign language but also facilitates communication for those unfamiliar with sign languages. For instance, someone who cannot speak can effortlessly conduct a lecture by having their gestures translated into real-time text, eliminating the need to manually type out the entire classroom lecture.
User Journey/Task Flow
Developing a user task flow facilitates early collaboration with developers, even before the creation of mock screens. This process ensures a comprehensive understanding of the overall scope by both frontend and backend teams. Given the urgency, it was imperative for all teams to work in tandem, progressing almost simultaneously.
