Southstart 2023

Scaling Pappyon to cater for a 4-day Southstart 2023 event.

Product:

Pappyon App

Platform:

iOS, Android, Desktop

Areas:

User Flow Mapping, Interaction, Prototyping, Visual Design, Collaboration with Developers

Role:

UX/UI Designer (Only designer in the team)

Southstart is a 4-day festival celebrating startups, innovation, and technology. Pappyon is a social networking app designed to connect attendees at events.

At the time, Pappyon only supported events with a basic event details and attendee list, there were no options to add event programs. We needed to expand the system to handle multi-day programs, displaying of speaker profiles, and speaker badges in attendee lists. It required significant changes not only on the app, but also on the web admin portal where organisers create and manage events.

With the event only 3 months away, I had to work quickly while making sure the design aligned with the organisers’ vision and delivered real value to their audience.

Background

My role

As the sole designer, I collaborated with three developers who were situated in different timezones, and the project manager, guiding the design process end-to-end across three platforms simultaneously:

The web admin portal (where organisers create and manage events)
The mobile app (iOS & Android, attendee-facing)
The web app (mirroring key attendee features for desktop use)

Approach

I started by mapping the existing event creation flow in the admin portal. This helped me identify where the system assumed “single-day” logic and how it needed to evolve.

From there, I designed a new flow for multi-day event creation, testing it with the PM and developers to make sure it aligned with backend capabilities.

Once the flows were validated, I moved into UI design across all touchpoints:

Admin Portal – New program creation screens with flexible day/session structures.
Mobile App – Updated navigation for browsing sessions by day, plus listing of speakers and viewing of speaker profiles on the event page.
Web App – Mirroring app changes for desktop use.

I worked in quick feedback cycles with developers, ensuring designs were implementable within our time constraints.

I also manage testing of all new implementations to make sure they met our quality standards and are working as expected.

Managing client feedback

The client provided feedback and suggested additional features to be added to the app and portal. Due to limited resources in our team, we had to prioritise these requests based on the time it would take for the developers to make the changes, how much impact it would have on the user experience, and the business needs. Our priorities were always changing due to unforeseen issues that arose during the project.

Outcome

The features required for the Southstart 2023 event were delivered with over 350 attendees utilising Pappyon to connect and communicate with each other, and over 1200 connections were made at the event. The feedback we received from the client and the attendees was overwhelmingly positive, with many praising the app and portal for its ease of use and effectiveness in facilitating networking opportunities.

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