The cell-ECM crosstalk is critical to maintaining homeostasis and repairing tissue especially in the meniscus, a dense connective tissue in the knee joint that distributes loads. Hydrogels are water-swollen polymer-crosslinked networks that can be used as ECM mimetics to explore this cell-ECM crosstalk. This thesis investigates the central question: how can the extracellular environment support and induce favorable cell-ECM crosstalk towards meniscus repair. By engineering various hydrogel microstructures, this question is explored through two avenues: inducing cell migration for tissue engineering applications and contractility for fibrous tissue development modeling. In the first part, we tune porosity and microinterfaces via granular and bicontinuous hydrogels, respectively, to explore how these cues provide paths that support cell infiltration. In the second part, we mimic the developing meniscus by engineering composite fibrous hydrogels consisting of fragmented electrospun fibers embedded within a continuous phase, whereby crosslinking of the continuous phase enables user-definition of contractility parameters. In total, this thesis contributes to an understanding of hydrogel design and fabrication towards inducing desirable behaviors to provide insights towards meniscus repair.