Meetle

So why don’t you just meet me in the meetle?

I just showed you a product I worked on for 15 years. Here's one I started just a few weeks ago in Rails. I hope it gives you a taste of my design thinking in the early stages of product development.

The idea: Riffing off the saying “This meeting could've been an email,” you send an email to a dedicated address which transforms it into a web page (or pages) that your “attendees” can respond to asynchronously. This gets rid of both live meetings and an out-of-control reply chain.

I'm calling it Meetle right now. It's all running locally at the moment, so screenshots and video captures will have to do!

Sharpening tone and message

Oftentimes, I'll start design with copy. It helps me evolve the idea into something real. Here's my current homepage design and copy.

A screenshot of the Meetle homepage. — **The elevator pitch:** In 30 seconds, I want someone to understand the idea, why it's useful, and entice them to view the sample.

I came up with six other headlines that I all liked. So, I created a small Stimulus controller to randomize the headlines on page load:

This meeting could've been ~~an email~~ a meetle.
Little + meeting = meetle.
Why don't you just meet me at the meetle?
Meetles get everyone on the same (web) page.
A meeting...without the meeting part.
5.5 million meetings a day should've been meetles.

Marketing through pricing

Instead of a monthly subscription, I'm considering selling each meetle at a flat rate. That not only provides a more clear price comparison (the true time cost of a meeting vs. a meetle), but also an alternative selling angle: Buy a pack of meetles for someone else, like your meeting-loving manager!

A screenshot of the Meetle pricing page. — **Real ROI:** For $10, I could cancel my next ten needless real-time meetings? Yes please!

Getting through the meeting meetle

Here's the start of what Meetle will look like. I'm dabbling with the idea of a front page that shows the meeting owner, the purpose statement, the attendees, and the timeframe the meetle is active, all derived from the email content. I've started right in Rails and front-end code—no design files.

For Meetle creators, I want them to think “Nice! I created this pretty useful, time-saving site by just sending an email?”

Thinking ahead: There will eventually be an email parser that will turn emails into public web pages based on some conventions. For example, the subject line and first paragraph will be part of the intro page, a delimeter like "---" separates text into different pages, and you can list attendees as a list at the end of your email.

Keyboard first

I'm experimenting with making the entire app controllable via a keyboard. Hitting ENTER sends you into the Meetle. The ← and → keys let you quickly navigate between pages. Clicking F spawns an auto-focused pop-up for giving feedback.

Keying in: Early flow of Meetle using keyboard navigation only (see lower-left of video for key captures).

Opinionated software

You introduced the world to the idea of opinionated software 20 years ago, and I've taken that idea to heart in many of the products I've worked on. Meetle is very opinionated. A few examples: A required purpose statement. One piece of feedback, per page, per attendee rather than lengthy back-and-forths. A small period of time for viewing and feedback.

So you're telling me there's a chance? If I'm actually offered this job, I will (quite gladly) cease working on this app due to its potential overlap with 37signals products.

Moving on from web-based software, my final two work examples are pure passion projects.