TwinUp

Event management and networking website

UX design ▪ Case study ▪ Personal Project

Challenge

How might we help people find the right people to network with in online events?

Role

UX designer

Deliverables

  • User research report
  • Task flows
  • Sketches
  • UI
  • Prototype

Tools

  • Figma
  • Google meet
  • Microsoft Office

Timeline

December 2022

Prototype

Networking at online events

Project background

 

Networking is hard

Networking is hard. You know it, I know it, and all people on LinkedIn know it. People feel awkward just casually walking up to strangers and striking up a conversation with them, or DMing them on social media.

It’s hard to break the ice, and even when you do it, it’s hard to maintain a conversation.

What is the solution?

Covid-19 pandemic has influenced us more than we can imagine. Most of us want to continue to work remotely and keep our work relationships online.

So what happens to networking at online events? How can we expand our professional network?

Problem statement

Networking is a key ingredient for professional progress. But many people avoid it because it can be awkward to talk to the strangers, online or in real life. This is a problem as it can prevent full professional growth.

Why is networking hard?

User research

Secondary research

Since this was a personal project, I decided to do a thorough secondary research about networking at events, people’s behaviors, struggles, and pain points.

I used literature reviews, business articles, social media platforms like Quora, Reddit, LinkedIn, etc., and search listening tools like Answer The Public.

List of questions

The questions that people have answered regarding networking:

❓ What is the most difficult thing about networking?

❓ Why is networking hard?

❓ How do you feel about networking?

❓ What was your experience about professional networking? 

Synthesize and analyze

I gathered all the data together to organize and analyze.

I created an affinity map to organize my findings and map out the frequent patterns that resulted in defining the main user pain points.

Main user pain points

I identified 3 main pain points. Users want answers to 3 important questions:

🎯 Are the right people that I want to network with there?

🎯 How do I start a conversation? What should I talk about?

🎯 How do I maintain the relationship with people I met after the event?
 
 

Experience journey map

Competitive analysis

Market research

 

Analysis of the market

I conducted a SWOT analysis of competitors to see the solutions in the market and analyze them. I analyzed 3 direct (Eventbrite, Meetup, Kommunity) and 2 indirect (Hopin, Bumble Bizz) competitors.

Results

Top 3 things that I’ve learned:

  1. The “Sign up process” is the key factor to decide how to design the whole platform
  2. The “Event suggestion system” of each platform is based on the sign up process approach.
  3. Having a “Consistent UI” can become a key advantage. Most platforms don’t have it.

Here is the link to the SWOT analysis.

What is the core problem?

POV statement

As an employee, I want to be able to network with others easily so that I can progress professionally.

Design solution

define, ideate, design

 

Impact/ effort matrix

Between the main pain points that I found out during the user research, I had to choose one of them for building an MVP.

The first problem seemed to be a good fit to the market opportunity that I found. That was when I came up with the problem statement.

Based on the results of the competitive assessment, I realized that the most important feature that determines the main approach of the platform is the “Sign up process”.

I figured that if I wanted to define the core value of the product for building an MVP, I should work on redesigning the sign up process.

Ideation & HMW

I ideated different solutions for this problem using these “How might we..?” questions:

  • HMW help employees find the right people to network with?
  • HMW help employees know their plan for networking before an event?
  • HMW help employees network more intentionally?
  • HMW help employees strike a conversation easier?
  • HMW connect people for networking?
  • HMW introduce the right people for networking to each other?

Design solution: TwinUp process

I brainstormed the potential solutions and came up with the TwinUp process.

This process comprises of 6 questions to help users find the right people to network with at online events.

Low-fidelity wireframes

I started designing the functionality of the website by designing lofi wriefrrames.

These are a few screens from this phase:

Twinup process:

Design solution

Final product

Style guide

Event suggestion system

Based on the results of the TwinUp process, users can choose the events based on main factors that is shown on the event card:

  • Number of twins
  • Event title
  • Price

None of the competitors have considered price to be a factor in the decision making process of the users. They also offer different suggestion systems like the organizer’s name, the number of attendees, etc.

Home page

TwinUp process

Events list

Event description

Profile page

Twins

Final thoughts

What is the success metric?

Measuring the success of the solution

Since this is a personal project, there is no way to measure success except for testing with people to see what they think about it. Which I did with 5 users and they were interested.

But if this product was built for real, this is how I would measure the success of the TwinUp process:

User engagement metrics like:

  • Conversion rate
  • New vs. returning visitors
  • Unique visitors

Usability metrics like:

  • Task success rate
  • Time on task
  • Task level satisfaction

Takeaways

  • During the whole project, I tried to put the users front and center, but I also tried to keep the business goals in mind. 

 

  • Since we can’t solve all the user’s problems, my goal was to find one simple solution to one of the core problems of the users. 

 

  • Choosing the concept of visual design was a big challenge during the design process. I explored various styles but at the end, I thought that simple and modern would be the safest bet.

 

  • If I had to do this project all over again, I would go to an networking event and talk to people face to face to get a better understanding of the problem, and I would test the product with them.

 

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