Design League – An AI-powered Event Planning Marketplace
Vendor Platform 0→1: Fueling Marketplace Growth
At Design League, I led design across the entire AI-driven product for our two-sided marketplace. My work spanned the vendor platform, client experience from discovery to booking, and shared planning tools and marketing touchpoints that connected the marketplace and drove growth.
This case study is a deep dive into one of those projects: the 0→1 design of our vendor platform. This launch unlocked supply-led growth, fueled bookings, and helped secure fundraising—while also paving the way for other platform features.
ROLE
Lead product designer
TIMELINE
Apr 2024 - Aug 2024
DELIVERABLES
Strategy, User research, User flows, Wireframes & Prototypes, Design handoff
THE BACKGROUND
Two sided marketplace with one side missing
Design League set out to reinvent event planning—connecting clients and vendors to make the process easier and more delightful for both.
But when I joined, only the client side existed. Vendors had no way in and no path to connect with leads. I was brought in to design the entire vendor experience, supporting our supply-led growth strategy and laying the foundation for fundraising.
Without a vendor platform or way to connect both sides, the marketplace couldn’t function. Solving this was our first step toward growth.
THE CHALLENGE
From vague inquiries to unclear client needs, vendors faced early friction that stalled momentum and slowed conversions
To understand the booking journey from a vendor’s perspective, I interviewed 15 event professionals and analyzed competitor platforms. While vendors turned to pay-to-play platforms for visibility, they still struggled to assess lead quality, clarify client needs, and create aligned proposals.
This insight defined where we could deliver the most value.
Strategy: solving early friction to unlock supply-led growth
After uncovering the early friction vendors faced, I led the strategy process with our founders and engineering lead. Together, we defined three focus areas to help vendors succeed while laying the groundwork for marketplace growth:
With a clear strategy in place, I translated each focus area into product experiences tailored for vendors.
Turning sign-up into a moment of recognition
Sign-up is the first step in onboarding—so I made it fast, welcoming, and motivating to get vendors excited and moving forward.
Vendors start by selecting their business from our 1,500+ vendor database. Once selected, the photo updates to showcase their own work—creating a moment of recognition and belonging. From there, account creation is quick and simple, helping keep momentum going.
Helping vendors set up quickly for high-quality matches
After signing up, vendors begin setting up their business—sharing details like services, style, pricing, and connections to help us match them well. But asking for all that upfront can quickly feel overwhelming.
The challenge: how do we collect what we need while keep the experience smooth and motivating?
Starting with a framework that scales, without losing the personal touch
I initially designed fully custom flows for each vendor type. They felt personal and encouraging—but as we added more vendor categories, the complexity grew across design, content and engineering.
We needed a better way—something scalable that still felt tailored. So I reworked the structure.
From fully custom-built to a balanced framework, keeping early steps consistent, and adapting only where vendor-specific details truly matter.
Highlights from the setup flow
Once the framework was in place, I started the first two steps with simple questions and smart defaults to reduce effort and build momentum.
Auto-filled basics and social accounts let vendors dive right in. Showcasing their own work at each step made the experience feel welcoming and full of recognition.
Vendor Love is where we invite vendors to endorse collaborators they trust, laying the foundation for a strong vendor network from the start.
Surfacing past collaborators by category using chips for quick scan-and-select, while a search bar helped vendors add anyone missing from the list.
While logistics help us match the basics, it’s style and personality that make connections meaningful. This final step asks vendors to select the top three qualities their clients value most—capturing what truly sets them apart.
Encouraging reflection by fading out unselected statements, helping vendors focus on what makes them unique.
Helping vendors grow through a focused, action-ready Vendor Portal
Once vendors completed onboarding, they entered the Vendor Portal—designed to guide their next steps: boosting visibility, converting leads, and building community.
Surfacing client engagement to guide vendor focus
To help vendors understand how their profile was performing, I surfaced simple engagement signals to build awareness without overwhelm. Vendors could quickly see how clients were interacting with their content and where to focus next.
Showing the most loved photos, visits, and favorites to build confidence and nudge vendors to upload more work and boost visibility.
Building momentum with a match-ready checklist
To help vendors become fully match-ready, I designed a checklist to help them build momentum through small wins.
Driving focus with one high-impact task at a time, making it easier for vendors to take action and start receiving matches.
Helping vendors turn match to booking
Once vendors were match-ready, our platform matched them with fitting client requests and sent a new inquiry they could act on.
I envisioned a centralized Workspace to give vendors everything they needed to convert a match into a booking—event details, client needs, and proposal tools.
The vision: from inquiry overview to Workspace, helping vendors act fast and turn matches into bookings.
While this vision wasn’t feasible for our MVP, I translated it into a lightweight, focused email experience that retained core value and kept vendors moving toward conversion.
MVP email approach: delivering key match details in email while driving vendors back into the platform to start their proposal with our tools.
Building vendor networks that strengthen the marketplace
Turning matches into bookings is only half the journey. To help vendors connect, collaborate, and keep growing after a booking, I designed the Community section.
Introducing community-driven tools: seeing who’s new, endorsing peers, and referring trusted vendors. These features deepened relationships, expanded vendor networks, and increased the supply powering our marketplace.
Unlocking supply-led growth with an offline-first launch
We kicked off our go-to-market in the real world with a series of in-person onboarding events in San Francisco. Collaborated with marketing, I designed a pop-up space where we welcome vendor community in and onboard them in person-and it has been wildly successful.
Pop-up onboarding events drove vendor sign-ups, brought our brand to life, refined the product through vendor feedback, and set the stage for early traction.
The momentum didn’t stop at the pop-up. Within three months of launch, vendors were onboarding fast, engaging deeply, and converting matches into bookings, with early signs of traction both inside and beyond the product.
These early wins proved we were on the right path—giving us the confidence to scale demand, double down on matching, and secure funding from both returning and new investors.
My takeaways
Designing the vendor platform wasn’t just about launching a product—it was about understanding what drives vendor action and sustaining momentum beyond the match. A few lessons I’ll carry forward:
Validate vision fast. Big ideas gain traction when you test them quickly and focus on the highest-impact elements first.
Retention lives in real workflows. Email can nudge, but lasting engagement comes from tools that fit naturally into how users already work.
Activation starts at launch. Shipping is only the beginning—design for activation as part of the product experience from day one.
Support the in-between. In slower-moving industries, the most important engagement often happens between key moments, so design for that space too.
Expanding the marketplace vision
Building on the vendor platform’s success and the insights gained, I designed and shipped new experiences across both sides of the marketplace—integrating AI into every part of the product to create a more connected, efficient, and enjoyable experience for vendors and clients alike.
