2022
hopin
Hopin is an immersive event's experience platform, that allows people to create and attend any kind of event. Offering a virtual, hybrid and in-person attendance, Hopin allows people to have engaging experiences from anywhere, no matter how they are accessing the event.
Problem
Before an event actually starts, the app’s offering is quite limited, allowing attendees to visit and edit some of their profile details only. The space for improvement in this area is highlighted by the data around first interactions. In fact, although people install the app, only 34% accomplish a first interaction*, taking them an average of 200 minutes to do it.
See prototype
Events — anytime, anywhere
Platform
iOS / Android Apps
Team
1 PM, 1 EM, 1 Data Analyst and 8 Engineers (4 Android, 4 iOS)
Role
Lead Designer
My Role
I owned this project end-to-end: I designed the research plan, conducted and synthesised user interviews, identified the core insight, and led the design from first explorations to finished product. I also drove cross-functional alignment across a team of 1 PM, 1 EM, 1 Data Analyst and 8 engineers — and connected stakeholders across Product, Research, Data, and Engineering who hadn't previously collaborated on mobile.
Understanding the gap
The 34% first-interaction* rate pointed to a structural problem in how the app handled the time before an event started. The hamburger menu was hiding the main app offerings; there were no updates on when event information would become available; and when attendees landed in the app, they were only prompted to fill in their profile — with no indication of what value that would unlock. The app was in its infancy, but the experience was already creating disengagement before the event even began.
Impact
The reception was redesigned and shipped, although the final scope shifted from the original design vision as the company restructured. The implemented changes focused on pre-event engagement and activation, reducing time to first interaction to under an hour and pushing activation rates from 70% to ~85%. Pre-event engagement reached ~10% of attendees. Beyond the numbers, the project reframed how the team thought about activation entirely — repositioning it as pre-event readiness, a conceptual shift that directly informed future roadmap discussions.
*An interaction is counted by 1 of the following: watch a piece of content, send a chat, ask a question, direct message, join a networking session, answer polls
The Baseline: Where we started
Install to interaction within 3 days funnel
Essentially 70% of the people downloading the app were not engaging with a first interaction. We had some ideas to why this might be happening. Information discoverability was low, and we were still relying on a hamburguer menu which was hiding all the main app offerings; additionally, there was also a lack of updates regarding the event itself, namely when information would become available. The app was still in its infancy and being iterated upon, but when people would land in the event's reception before the event started—and therefore with no information available—, they would only be prompted to fill in their profiles, which was also very limited in its editing capabilities. Regarding the rest of the main areas of the app, such as Schedule or Sessions, where people would expect to find relevant details, there would be no updates or indication of when it would become available.
Generative Reserch
In order to validate those assumptions I did some generative research, trying to keep it open to really understand what struggles people would have. I interviewed people and was later able extract some relevant insights. I got to learn that attendees spend nearly 1 hour online searching for more information about the speaker, so they decide whether to attend a session or not. I also validated the assumption that people did want to meet like minded folks, but was surprised to learn that they were not interested in meeting new people before the event started…
First Explorations
The first explorations included a bigger focus on the speakers, an introduction to the idea of an onboarding progression bar, and even an intention to build momentum through a news feed. There was also the idea of exploring a community sense of belonging through showing you other people attending that you might know.
An Onboarding Experience
In order to introduce people to value, the idea of an onboarding checklist was explored, to start showcasing the main value propositions of the app. People would be prompted to fill in their profile so that it would start tailoring their experience and help them be better identified by others, by adding a picture, defining interests and adding their headline. The goal with it would be to start the basis for a more tailored experience, so that in the future we would be able to rely on people’s online interactions and other behavioural data not only to suggest them sessions and speakers, but also to start enhancing this idea of a community based experience.
Information Surfacing
One of the other big issues people had was around finding information about the speakers. So we surfaced them at the reception, with a quick access profile preview, allowing for people to know more and start following speakers for any upcoming updates around sessions they might be participating in. One other simple but effective decision was to introduce empty states that would raise awareness for what people would later find in the app and be able to be notified about it.
A reception that knows where you are
The biggest risk with a dynamic reception was complexity — both in building it and in using it. A screen that changes behaviour based on context could easily feel unpredictable or confusing. The design challenge was making that intelligence invisible: the reception had to feel right for each moment without ever feeling inconsistent.
Rather than showing every attendee the same experience, the reception adapted based on ticket type, the current moment in the event lifecycle, and the user's own behaviour and completion state. One screen. Four different experiences. This reduced engineering complexity while making the app feel genuinely personal.
This direction was explored and validated in testing but was ultimately descoped during the company's restructuring. It's included here because it represents the strategic design vision for where the reception was heading.
What not to build
One finding was particularly clarifying: attendees had no interest in meeting new people before an event started. This directly challenged one of our early hypotheses — that social connection was a key driver of first interactions. Killing that direction early meant we could focus entirely on what people actually needed before doors opened: information, context, and a sense of what to expect.
That decision shaped everything that followed.
⏵ Prototype
The full end-to-end reception experience — from arriving at the app before an event starts, through to the live experience.
