Duration

3 months (2024)

Tools

Figma (Design, Figjam), Notion, ClickUp, Paper

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A note on visual design

Due to branding constraints and the need for rapid iteration across multiple product lines, the design system prioritised functional clarity over visual innovation. Most interfaces defaulted to a neutral black-and-white palette with minimal colour usage.

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The challenge

StackUp's developer community was already hosting events, just through Notion docs, Typeform registrations, and Google Sheets cobbled together into something that worked until it didn't. There was no unified experience. Attendees couldn't discover what was relevant to them. Organisers rebuilt every event from scratch.

Context

The ask was to consolidate all of this into a dedicated platform. The real problem to solve was: how do you make events feel effortless for attendees while giving organisers real control, without it feeling like two separate products?

The solution

I designed an events platform with two distinct but connected experiences: (1) one for frictionless discovery and registration, one for flexible configuration and (2) participant management. The architecture was modular from the start, so features could be deferred without breaking anything core.

In this case study

What was already broken

The smallest version that still feels complete

Building a shared vocabulary first

What ships, what waits, what stays flexible

What it became

What was already broken

Events were already happening, just messily. Organisers were making it work despite the systems, not because of them. When I talked to people who'd run internal and external events, the feedback was operational: they needed control over registration flows, optional approval processes, and reusable templates so they'd stop rebuilding the same thing from scratch every time.

I studied how Gumroad handles live events, how Eventbrite structures tagging, and how Substack embeds RSVPs — places where structured systems still feel lightweight. My north star: events should feel effortless to attend and powerful to run.