Episode 3: The ABC of setting up a meeting service : Accessible, Behind the scene, Completion

In my life, I have never worked on something that seems so simple from an outside perspective, but ends up being truly complex when you start looking further into it. The reason for complexity comes from the fact that, to offer the best service to setup a meeting, you need to understand all the constraints of the organization that come into play in the user’s life, including the non conscious ones, and integrate them in your product, ideally in an invisible, or, at least, the smoothest way as possible.

We built Meeting’s Monster with what we call the ABC values : Accessible, Behind the scene and Completion.

• Accessible : To set up a meeting you need to fill 2 fields and click 2 buttons.
• Behind the scene : All complex tasks should happen behind the scene and must be handled by the system
• Completion : At the end, do whatever it needs, but the meeting must be set up with all your guests

1. Accessible

If you think about what you truly need to set up a meeting, it comes down to “When” and “Who”. When is the meeting is set and Who is attending.

Do not get me wrong, the duration is an important element, but it is not crucial to the attendants. For example, you already had some meetings that last longer than plan, and I hope for you, some shorter. Nevertheless to find availability, it is vital information for the system. As well, if you are organizing a business meeting, the topic of the meeting is expected.

The user interface must be as close as the way the user thinks.

So, on the first page of our service, we sum up those 4 infos.

• Title of the meeting
• Participants name
• Duration: 99% of meetings always have the same duration. So, you can actually sum it up with 3 buttons : 30, 45, or 60mn. Of course, users also have an option that allows them to personalize it if those aren’t convenient.
• Date & Time: when thinking about when you want to set up a meeting, in the vast majority of cases it is relatively urgent, and therefore you’d need the meeting in the next 2 days, or next week, or next month. To cater to this need, Meeting’s Monster offers 3 buttons. Of course, users also have an option that allows them to personalize, if those options aren’t convenient.

We believe in 4 information: 2 fields and 2 buttons the host provides enough information to set up the meeting.

Based on those information the system goes ahead and does the rest of the work !

2. Behind the scene

The system runs and manages 2 scenarios

• Scenario 1 : All attendants of the meetings are on Meetings Monster. In this case, the system takes into consideration each attendant’s automatic constraints and the personalized ones. Automatic constraints concern availability : what is the time zone of the user and what is his availability. The personalized constraints are those defined by customers through the set up menu : does he have any special time slots that are not open for meetings ? Does he want a 15mn break between 2 meetings ? In the long run, commuting must be taken into account. Commute is a complex system that even Google did not tackle. Besides obviously where you are and where you will be, you must take into account how the customer will commute. This choice will depend on external elements : during rush hours users will likely choose subway or train, on short distance they might choose a scooter, but if it rains, Uber might be the best choice. After having scanned the availabilities, both automatic and personal, the system goes ahead and identifies the most relevant ones
• Scenario 2 is the most likely one : some attendants are not registered on the service, in which case the system would still proceed like it did in the first scenario. However, since it has no visibility on the agendas, and constraints of the non registered guests, Meetings Monster creates a series of potential slots for meetings. The system picks and offers the top 5 relevant time slots, balanced between the AM and PM, start of the time frame and end of the time frame, and availabilities of the Meeting Monsters users. Of course, if registered users have meetings set up during the process, the busy slots will be removed from the offered slots.

All the work occurs behind the scenes, and for the customers it is completely invisible. We are aware that, for him, the only thing that matters is having the meeting set up and ready to go.

3. Completion

On the contrary of many other solutions, we chose to focus on pushing the automation to the maximum and narrowing the choices, in order to have a meeting set up. So, we are not offering a poll to the end user, but a funnel approach leading to an automatic setup..
It’s indeed taking the risk of limiting the number of time slots, but it still offers a huge advantage as it renders setting up meetings a much smoother, faster, and simpler experience.

Let’s take an example to illustrate :I’d like to invite Patrick and Emily over next week. However, neither of them are registered users. In this case, Meetings Monster will check my availability and offer a series of time slots to my two guests. Let say there are 5 recommended slots, and a 15 total. Considering it is a “first come first served” system, if Emily answers first, she will pick 4 slots. Then, Patrick will have the choice within the 4 slots chosen by Emily. Once the slot selected, the meeting is set up without any contribution. The advantage of the approach is a) the meeting is set up automatically once everybody has answered, meaning the host does not need to check it b) all guests are attending the meeting, and that is what everybody wants.

Thanks to the ABC approach (Accessible, Behind the scene, Completion) we want to believe we are offering an intuitive and efficient system to set up meetings with several people inside or outside the company.