Meetup · Product Design · Medium team

Designing trust into Meetup events

Challenge & role

There was no good way to know if a Meetup event was worth attending, and trust across communities was a company-wide problem.

I led the trust strategy, mapping organizers, attendees, and groups, and set research and design direction for a 5-star rating, event highlights, and private organizer feedback.

We chose stars because they were the easiest to read, even though "people would come back" was more meaningful.

Outcome

Lifted first-time RSVPs and joins to high-quality groups by 10-15% in the beta. Selective organizers found public ratings too transactional, so we paused scaling past beta.