Case Study: CircleOp
I helped CircleOp go from initial concept to over 1,000 users.
CircleOp’s goal is to put an end to bad meetings by encouraging meeting best practices and follow-up.
CircleOp: From Idea to 1000+ Users
In the known universe, there are two constants: everybody loves Raymond, and everybody hates meetings. (The first is still up for debate.) Meetings are often unproductive, and people see them as momentum killers. Tom Gardner created CircleOp to change that. I worked with Tom to take CircleOp from an initial concept to a beta release with over 1,000 users.
The Problem
An estimated $37 billion a year is wasted on unproductive meetings. Around 11 million meetings take place in America every day, and 33% of them are unproductive. [Source: Business Insider] How can we leverage technology to improve the productivity of meetings?
The Approach
Tom and I identified common pains people associate with meetings, and came up with a list of features to address those pains. We interviewed potential customers about their experience with meetings, and asked them to rate each pain on a scale of 1–5, and then to rate each of our proposed solutions on a scale of 1–5.
I analyzed the results and identified takeaways: the greatest pain felt was in the lack of an action plan. Users were least concerned about roles for meeting attendees.
Based on the results, I wireframed what those solutions might look like, and we showed them to another group of potential users, asking them again to rate their pain, and the effectiveness of the proposed solutions.
I created a set of wireframes with features that addressed the pain points users associated with meetings.
We iterated our feature set again, and created a polished prototype. Usability testing revealed some hiccups in the user flow, which we addressed in another iteration.
The following images show the evolution of the agenda screen, a centerpiece of the user experience. Version 1 was an attempt to include all things meeting in one screen — it required significant scrolling on our smallest screen target, iPhone5.
Version 2 addressed the long scroll by introducing live mode (to use in meetings) and edit mode (to create and edit a meeting).
Version 3 broke the long screen into tabs, and added a timer feature. Version 4 reintroduced estimated cost, prominent date/time, and templates. In response to user feedback, version 5 simplified the user experience by removing or reducing features seen as having little value, including the timer, templates, and estimated costs.
We introduced colors and polished styles in Version 6. In Version 7 we simplified yet again, refining the UI and UX by focusing on the most important features, and removing others or moving them to dropdown menus.
We were focused on getting customer input throughout this process. This allowed us to iterate quickly, and gave us confidence that our solution was focused on effectively addressing real pains our customers were facing.
The Results
Our focus on the customer paid off. We came away with an MVP that addressed the pain people were feeling around meetings. With the beta version of the app, Tom was able to sign up over 1,000 users for CircleOp.