Pioneering Product Design at Events.com — From Inception to Market
Director, Product Design at Events.com - Led the product design vision, team building, and execution from inception through market launch, later expanding my scope to include product management leadership to drive strategy, team alignment, and market growth.
Oct 2014 - Jun 2020 - 6 years at Events.com (from product inception through scaling and growth).
Project Overview
Events.com set out to build a comprehensive B2B2C event management platform that would serve both event organizers and event attendees.
Event Organizer Persona: Tools for self-service, mid-market, and enterprise organizers, with walkthrough tutorials, a robust help system, and an intuitive interface for managing events end-to-end.
Event Attendee Persona: Seamless experiences for discovering events, registering, purchasing tickets, and engaging throughout the lifecycle of the event.
Key Products:
Events.com website & platform
EverySale (on-site point-of-sale kit)
Check-In app with QR code scanning and voice recognition
Analytics and reporting tools for organizers
Problem Statement
The event management industry lacked a modern, unified solution that could balance the complex needs of organizers with the ease-of-use expected by attendees. Competing products were fragmented, clunky, or tailored to only one side of the marketplace.
Business Goals
Establish Events.com as a trusted, scalable event management platform serving both small and enterprise customers.
Provide organizers with tools that streamline event setup, ticketing, and on-site sales while supporting revenue growth.
Deliver a seamless attendee experience to encourage trust, loyalty, and repeat event engagement.
Differentiate in the market by offering end-to-end solutions: pre-event setup, real-time operations, and post-event analytics.
Team Goals
Build a world-class design team from the ground up, spanning product design, UX research, and visual design.
Instill a user-centered design culture within the company.
Establish design operations with scalable tools, workflows, and cross-functional alignment.
Deliver a consistent design system across all products and user touchpoints.
Discovery Process
Conducted persona research to deeply understand both organizers (self-service to enterprise) and attendees.
Collaborated with product and engineering teams to define user journeys across the entire event lifecycle.
Implemented rapid prototyping and usability testing to validate ideas early.
Leveraged analytics and customer feedback to refine workflows and prioritize features.
Outcomes - Strategic Impact
Unified Ecosystem: Successfully designed and launched a platform serving both organizers and attendees across Events.com, EverySale, and Check-In.
Scalable Design Team: Grew a high-performing multidisciplinary team; mentored early-career designers who later joined companies like Google, Netflix, and Drata.
Operational Excellence: Implemented design tools and processes that improved delivery speed and collaboration across departments.
Product Growth: Expanded scope into product management, ensuring strong alignment between design, business strategy, and market research.
Market Differentiation: Positioned Events.com as an end-to-end solution in a competitive industry.
Key Leadership Insights
Visionary Leadership: A dual-audience challenge (B2B organizers + B2C attendees) can only succeed through a clear, unified product vision.
Builder Mindset: Scaling a team and processes from scratch is as critical as building the product itself.
Mentorship Multiplier: Investing in team growth created lasting impact beyond the company, with alumni shaping the design industry at leading tech firms.
Cross-Functional Ownership: Expanding into product management leadership ensured design’s influence on strategy, not just execution.
