Poppin
User Research
JULY 2024 - JANUARY 2025
🌟 Overview: Prioritizing Guests for a Better Event Experience
Poppin is a social media-driven event planning platform designed to help users discover local events, host gatherings, and connect with their communities. While the app had a solid foundation for event hosts, guest experiences had not been a primary research focus—until now.
Until July 2024, the UX team primarily conducted research on event hosts, particularly within UCLA Greek Life, analyzing their needs and behaviors. However, a May 2024 UX survey surfaced a critical gap: guests needed more attention in the product experience. In response, we shifted our focus to prioritize guest users and uncover insights that would drive better engagement, usability, and differentiation from competitors.
Step 1: Understanding the Competitive Landscape
Before refining the guest experience, we needed to answer a critical question: How does Poppin compare to competitors?
By conducting a comprehensive competitive analysis, we evaluated POSH VIP, FLARE, PARTIFUL, and EVENTBRITE, assessing:
🔹 What tools and functionalities do they offer?
🔹 Who are they built for? Who is the target audience?
🔹 Where do they excel, and where do they fall short?
🔍 Key Findings:
1️⃣ POSH VIP – Thrives on exclusivity but lacks scalability for larger groups.
2️⃣ EVENTBRITE – Feature-rich but doesn’t cater to the college-age social scene.
3️⃣ FLARE & PARTIFUL – Sleek, modern designs but lack marketing & analytics tools.
🧐 The Missing Piece: Where Competitors Fall Short
Our research uncovered three major gaps in the event-planning space:
🔸 Streamlined Planning for Large Groups – Managing hundreds of guests is difficult, and existing platforms don’t make it easy.
🔸 Privacy & Safety Controls – College events require tighter invitation and attendance controls, yet most competitors overlook this need.
🔸 Cross-Organization Collaboration – Few tools make it easy for groups and clubs to co-host events together.
🍾 Poppin’s Core Differentiator:
Poppin prioritizes safety and privacy, offering features like misconduct reporting, blacklist tools, and tighter event access controls. These elements set it apart in a competitive market where safety is often an afterthought.
Step 2: Observing How Users Engage with the App
With a clearer competitive positioning, the next step was to analyze real user behavior through usability testing.
👥 We focused on three key user flows:
1️⃣ Onboarding – How easy is it for new users to get started?
2️⃣ Event Creation – How do hosts set up and manage their events?
3️⃣ RSVP Process – What barriers exist in the guest sign-up experience?
🔬 Methodology:
We conducted moderated usability testing sessions, where participants completed key tasks in a neutral setting to encourage honest, unbiased feedback.
🔍 Key Insights & UX Solutions
1️⃣ Onboarding: The First Impression Matters
❇️ What Worked: Users described the onboarding process as intuitive, engaging, and visually appealing.
🚫 Pain Points:
Instagram Integration – Users hesitated to link their social accounts due to privacy concerns.
Permissions Uncertainty – Many were unsure why the app requested contacts & notifications.
🌟 Solution:
Reframe permissions prompts to explain the value & security of linking accounts.
Provide clearer opt-in explanations for contacts & notifications.
Old onboarding interface
Interactive and engaging onboarding experience
2️⃣ Event Creation: Making It Fun & Functional
❇️ What Worked: Users found the event creation process enjoyable, comparing it to posting on Instagram.
🚫 Pain Points:
The chat feature was hard to find.
The Host Dashboard (a key feature) was underutilized—users who found it loved it, but most overlooked it.
🌟 Solution:
Improve feature discoverability with better visual cues & onboarding prompts.
Guide users toward Host Dashboard functionality to maximize engagement.
📈 UX Research Driving Product Impact
This research played a pivotal role in shaping Poppin’s guest-centric redesign, offering data-backed solutions to improve onboarding, event creation, and overall usability.
🎯 The Outcome:
🌟 A clearer competitive edge emphasizing safety & accessibility.
🌟 Feature refinements informed by real user behaviors.
🌟 A stronger guest experience, reinforcing Poppin’s mission to make event planning seamless & engaging.
🚀 Final Takeaway
By combining competitive analysis, usability testing, and user feedback, we transformed Poppin’s guest experience into a more intuitive, engaging, and secure event-planning platform.
💡 This project reinforced the power of UX research—not just to refine a product, but to shape its long-term vision and impact.