

How Meetup Onboards New Users - samuelhulick
http://www.useronboard.com/how-meetup-onboards-new-users/

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ivanplenty
Accept my complements on the approach. Very cool.

 _[Edit: Keep it up, and I wouldn 't describe any of this as critique!]_

Slide 9, "Notice how de-emphasized Start is." Following the arrow, I see that
"Find" and "Start" are the same size and believe are emphasized similarly in
the header. What cue am I failing to notice that one is de-emphasized?

A subtlety that's lost is between Slides 26 and 28 the user has two separate
flows and browser sessions. It doesn't come across clicking next,next,next
without reading your text.

 _[Edit: I didn 't notice there were titles, so the only recommendation I have
is to put something in the center of focus -- a graphic, a blurred out gmail
inbox, a "later that day" film satire, etc.]_

On 35, I had a different reaction to the facebook button there. This flow
seems like it's based on creating a non-facebook account -- most people here
in the flow already have signaled to Meetup they don't want to use fb. Why ask
again? It seems like an unnecessary widget that may carry overly strong
emotions for some customers. I wonder if this hook successfully converts non-
fb users to fb users.

On 44, what was the initial goal for creating an account? Wasn't it to do
something specific within the group? At 44 it feels like this flow was a
glorified "sign-me-up-for-the-newsletter" form instead of joining a community.
Do you have any thoughts about what should be changed at this step in the
flow? Should users get dropped back on the PDX meetup page? Should users get
introduced to actual neighbors, much like a host would when you show up to a
party? Does slide 44 always work that way for all meetups?

 _[Edit: Good point on 45-47, I guess I expected to see the whole page 48 be
in orange pen! That flow looks very confusing to me, and I think I was trying
to nudge you to call it out if you thought so, too.]_

~~~
samuelhulick
Thanks for the kind words, and the critique!

Slide 9: Good point, I was kind of unclear. I was referring to how that was
the only place on the page that referred to Start, whereas almost all of the
rest of page's content was Find-centric.

Slides 26-28: I kinda thought the interstitial title card alluded to that. Is
there a better way you'd recommend?

Slide 35: Yeah, I tend to agree with you on that. That might have been an
"orange pen" candidate. I was just commenting on their persistence, I suppose.

Slide 44: There's a chance this happened because there were no upcoming
Meetups scheduled at that time. But I completely agree with you - hence slides
45 & 46.

Thanks again for your thoughtful commentary!

------
incision
Timely, I signed up for Meetup ages ago and only recently started getting any
use out of it.

A few things:

#25 - Please don't even suggest that a site shouldn't validate email addresses
immediately. Validation isn't just about keeping spammers off the site. It's
also about not spamming the poor folks with common names from the consistently
amazing number of people who don't know their own email address. I've
witnessed a constant deluge of everything from bank statements to party
invites from sites that don't validate the addresses their users provide.

#26 - I'd be really surprised if "hour" was any sort of admission about things
on the meetup end. More likely it's a wise acknowledgement of the reality of
user email beyond the large, well-functioning services like GMail. If you say
a "few minutes" you'll have people in a vicious circle of hitting resend then
clicking on the now useless (expired) confirmations as they trickle through
their half-assed Exchange system or budget spam filter.

#30 - This caught me up when I signed up for meetup. It asks for a "bio", but
it's used more like a title or tagline as 100 characters or so accompany your
avatar on membership/attending pages.

~~~
samuelhulick
Good points!

Slide 25: Many gigantic websites allow you to experience the product without
throwing up an immediate roadblock. Tumblr comes to mind.

Slide 26: It's all about providing behavioral cues to the user. You could
easily have the "you might want to wait an hour" message pop up only when they
request the confirmation be re-sent, for example.

Slide 30: Yep!

------
samuelhulick
Hi all! If anyone has any questions or comments, I'm happy to answer 'em!

~~~
Roedou
It's a bit off-topic, but I'd love to know what tool/service you used to
create those slideshows; assuming it's not all homebrew. The simplicity , the
annotations and the 'hover zoom' are really nice touches.

(Fantastic work on the site btw. Looking forward to seeing more.)

~~~
samuelhulick
I should probably do a teardown on my own process at some point, but here's a
quick overview:

• Record the entire experience full-screen with Screenflow
([http://www.telestream.net/screenflow/](http://www.telestream.net/screenflow/)
\- highly recommended)

• Paste stills into Keynote, annotate them, etc.

• Export to PDF, split it into individual jpegs via Automator, batch scale
them for web via Ps droplet

• Display images on site with homemade slideshow js, plus zoom effect from
jQuery Zoom by Jack Moore
([http://www.jacklmoore.com/zoom/](http://www.jacklmoore.com/zoom/) \- also
highly recommended)

That's about it!

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smackfu
If I'm logged in, I see "Launch" a Meetup group in the header. If I'm not
logged in, I see "Start". Surprised they see a need for a difference. The
current 50% promotion for creating a new group also draws attention to that
option. I wonder how many non-members actually start new groups?

Also, that "short bio" section from page 30 is in fact problematic in Meetup
groups I am members of. Most people say something like, "I'm new in town and
trying to meet people." Well, for a lot of people, it's a year or two later,
and Meetup still shows that same text. And it used to be buried on the profile
pages, but they moved it to a much more prominent position, to be under your
name in the attendee listing. So it tends to look like everyone on Meetup just
joined the site.

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GotNothing
Cool site, so I went to find a link to the RSS feed... "D'oh!" \- No button.

So I added rss onto the end of the url (common practice)... "D'oh!" \- error
code dump.

fix that and I'll be back for more ;)

~~~
elwell
Ouch, yeah it gives username.

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archivator
Awesome work!

Nitpicking/design language question - would you use the term "affordance" to
describe the avatar silhouette itself? To me, that's just a clue, an
indicator, a hint to the general action possibility (affordance) of setting up
an avatar.

~~~
samuelhulick
Yeah, I sort of took poetic license with that one. I think the case could be
made much more strongly if I was interacting directly with it, and if it
indicated how I was supposed to do so.

In this case, I used the term pretty carelessly.

~~~
archivator
Thanks for clarifying. I'm new to the world of design and am still struggling
with some of the nuances of expression.

~~~
samuelhulick
This video is in regards to game design, but the lessons apply to web, as
well. It's also the best explanation of affordances I've seen out there!
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCSXEKHL6fc](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCSXEKHL6fc)

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codebeard
Unnecessary and distracting parallax features are quickly becoming the marquee
and blink of this generation.

~~~
samuelhulick
Is this in regard to UserOnboard.com? I don't like them either, which is why I
didn't add them to the site.

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mandeepj
slideshow is not working for me. May be it is just me :-(

I am using Chrome 32.0.1700.102 m on Windows 7 Enterprise

~~~
samuelhulick
Sorry to hear that. Is it only showing the title image, then solid blue for
the rest?

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lvs
"Onboard" isn't a verb.

~~~
pulakm
Only according to the dictionary. It's pretty common parlance in this context.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onboarding](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onboarding)

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danso
OK I'm not by any means a heavy Meetup user (I do go to a few meetings and
belong to a couple active groups) and may be less plugged into the dev scene
than I think I am...but Meetup seems to have a disproportionately low number
of useful hacks that leverage its data...I can't think of the last time I've
seen a Show HN do a Meetup hack (yes, I know, selection bias, living in a
bubble, etc.)

I haven't looked at the API, but how robust is it? If I were to make a get-to-
know-NYC-app, I would think that Meetup data would be more useful than either
Facebook or Foursquare, just because of what it captures in its structures (or
at least, from what I see as a web user)

~~~
adrianparsons
Great point.

Our API is awesome and not enough people know about it, which is why we just
announced that we're hiring a developer evangelist.

[http://www.meetup.com/jobs/developer-evangelist#job-
title](http://www.meetup.com/jobs/developer-evangelist#job-title)

