Eventbrite: Creator Home
Eventbrite creators were drowning in a fractured toolset. Without a centralized hub, navigating the platform felt chaotic, causing severe drop-offs right when users were trying to set up their events and discover marketing tools. Operating under an incredibly tight H2 2022 timeline, I stepped in as Product Design Lead to replace this fragmented ecosystem with a unified, intuitive workspace. By completely restructuring our onboarding framework and naturally surfacing high-value marketing utilities, we turned a disjointed setup process into a streamlined activation engine that dramatically moved our core growth metrics.
My role: Product Design Lead
Context: Dual-Sided Marketplace Optimization
Duration: 1 Month (MVP) + Rapid Optimization Iterations
Impact: Boost Subscription Adoptions: +30% | First Paid Event Publishes: +18%
The Whole Picture
Creator Home wasn’t a standalone feature; it was the central hub of a much larger growth initiative that included two other critical pathways: the Marketing Landing Page and the Onboarding Flow. While those focused on executing those specific paths, I provided the overarching design direction, guidance, and cross-team oversight. It was my job to connect the dots between all three workstreams, ensuring a cohesive platform narrative so the entire ecosystem felt seamless from the moment a creator logged in.
Heading into the second half of 2022, Eventbrite’s primary objective was to get more active creators hosting events on the platform. When we dug into the funnel data and user behavior analytics, we found two massive friction points blocking us:
Subscription Confusion: New creators couldn't figure out which paid tier actually matched the size of their event.
Hidden Value: Users who signed up for free trials were completely missing Boost (our marketing suite) because the tools were buried outside their natural event-creation workflow.
To balance these aggressive business metrics with real user value, I wrote a collaborative alignment framework to get our stakeholders on the same page. I translated raw business requirements into plain-spoken human problem statements, focusing on how we could give creators automated guidance and drastically lower the cognitive load of getting an event live.
Balancing Business Goals with Real User Pain
Final problem statements:
Working with the Data We Had (The Discovery Phase)
Because our timeline was incredibly compressed, we didn’t have the luxury of running fresh, weeks-long user interview cycles. Instead, I established a rapid discovery phase by piecing together what we already knew. I dug into previous research reports, analyzed recent funnel metrics, and ran a comprehensive competitive audit to see how modern creators expected to engage with our platform. I grouped these insights into three core design pillars with sub themes:
Kick-off Workshop
To get everyone moving in the same direction, I ran a cross-functional alignment workshop for our product, engineering, and marketing leadership and teams. Gathering everyone into one collaborative “room” (you know it was Figjam) early on was essential. It allowed us to voice technical constraints, hash out product requirements, and lock in a shared direction before we spent time playing around with design explorations.
Designing for Two Very Different Users
Once we had alignment, I jumped into rapid wireframing and layout exploration. I anchored the design around a modular card layout because we needed a single interface that could gracefully serve two entirely different user profiles:
The Novice Creator: Needed a clear, step-by-step checklist to guide them through successful initial milestones setup without making them feel overwhelmed.
The Power User: Wanted to skip the basics entirely and instantly see deep event metrics, live conversion data, and quick feature shortcuts.
Navigating Constraints (AKA: You Wanted Actual Time to Design This? Ha!)
Midway through the project, shifting technical dependencies cut our timeline in half. Eventbrite’s biggest signup spike of the year happens on September 1st, so missing that launch window wasn't an option. I collaborated directly with front-end engineering to pivot, scaling our complex card framework down into a streamlined, list-based MVP checklist. Stripping the layout down to this core checklist freed the engineering team to build the foundational architecture immediately, allowing us to keep refining the remaining designs while they got started. It wasn't the expansive dashboard we initially dreamed up, but it guaranteed we shipped a stable, high-value product right before our highest-traffic day of the year.
Accessibility
I refuse to treat accessibility like a rushed checklist item right before shipping. Eventbrite’s legacy brand palette didn't meet comprehensive AA compliance standards, so I partnered directly with our external brand teams to overhaul our core visual assets. We audited and implemented high-contrast color variants, explicit focus states, accessible typography scales, and robust screen-reader support to make sure we were building a truly inclusive workspace.
Final MVP Designs
Engineering Handoff
To eliminate any "lost in translation" friction between design and code, we brought our engineers into the process on day one. We reviewed component structure, layout logic, and edge cases together in parallel with my visual design refinement cycles. Because of this continuous communication, the final handoff didn't involve chaotic, reactive explanation sessions—we delivered highly annotated Figma specs that led to an incredibly efficient build cycle.
Huh. Well, that Didn’t Work.
We watched the live data roll in post-launch, waiting for the big win. Instead? Total radio silence. Turns out, trying to make every single internal stakeholder happy meant we had crammed the checklist with far too many tasks. (To be honest, I had warned about this trap early on and spent weeks playing defense. The version we shipped was actually a reduced list compared to what stakeholders originally wanted, but clearly we still needed to cut deeper.) What we had built a noisy, cluttered wall of text, and creators did exactly what any of us would do. They completely ignored it. It was a bit of a bruise, but clearly identified where needed to take action.
Fixing it fast with a/b testing
I initiated a rapid optimization phase to salvage the feature and turn the metrics around. First, I took a chainsaw to the list, stripping it down to three non-negotiable actions that actually mattered: creating the event, setting up the profile, and setting up payouts. Then, I designed an A/B test to see how best to present them, pitting a focused checklist layout against a more visual set of dashboard tiles. The actions were the same, but the layout presentation changed everything. The checklist won by a landslide. The slimmed-down checklist won by a mile. Getting rid of the visual clutter and using a straightforward, 3 step checklist wiped out the friction and got creators moving again.
The Final Design
The updated layout successfully combined the winning streamlined checklist with a few personalized modules for later. By cutting out the stakeholder noise and focusing purely on what users actually needed to do, the new design unlocked the exact momentum the business was looking for. It proved that sometimes the best user guidance is just getting out of the way and keeping things incredibly simple.
Quantifiable Impact
Upon releasing the slimmer checklist we began to see the results we were looking for. Hurray! In the end, we saw…
Boost Subscription Adoptions: +30%
First Paid Event Publication Velocity: +18%
Team Velocity: Replaced reactive design handoffs with an engineering-forward, system-driven workflow.
Balancing Tasks with Educational Content
Beyond the core setup tools, we also needed to figure out where to put educational resources like how-to guides, platform tips, and creator spotlights. The trap here was turning the dashboard into a messy blog feed. We focused on treating this content as a supportive secondary layer by positioning it beneath the main action items so creators could easily find resources to scale their events without it cluttering their primary workspace.
Mapping Layout Densities for Creator Success
Initial visual design explorations focused on optimizing the core layout of the task list itself. I ran through multiple layout orientations and content densities to figure out how to surface high-stakes setup milestones without giving users immediate dashboard fatigue. The goal was to establish a clear visual hierarchy that positioned Eventbrite as an intuitive partner rather than an overwhelming, task-heavy chore list. I needed to find the exact sweet spot where a creator could see their immediate next steps clearly without feeling like the interface was crowding them.
