Product Design - Web & Mobile
A social platform for discovering in-person communities & social events
01 — Overview
Context
Flock helps people discover local communities, attend events, and turn shared interests into real-life friendships.
When I joined, Flock was an early-stage web MVP with basic community discovery and ticketing functionality. As the founding product designer, I developed its brand identity and redesigned the core product experience across web and mobile.
Programs Used
Figma
Role & credits
Product Design
Team
Jess Sung
Bryan Nguyen
Duration
8 months
02
The Challenge
Flock was entering a space already occupied by platforms like Eventbrite, Meetup, and Discord. Improving the existing interface was only part of the challenge. We needed to define why someone would choose Flock if a larger platform introduced similar IRL community features.
At the same time, we were addressing a deeply human problem: people felt lonely and wanted to make friends, but discovering an event did not guarantee that they would feel comfortable attending or form meaningful relationships afterward.
This led to our guiding question:
How might we help people discover communities that feel right for them, build enough trust to meet offline, and continue those relationships beyond one event?
03
Immersive Product Research
I began by auditing Flock’s MVP and studying Eventbrite, Meetup, and Luma. I compared how each platform approached discovery, information hierarchy, ticketing, host credibility, and event registration.
My research also extended beyond direct competitors. I approached it almost like method acting for product design: I downloaded and actively used any app with a pattern that could inform Flock.
Hinge inspired more personable profiles and written prompts. Animal Crossing demonstrated how illustration and character could make a digital environment feel warm and inviting. I then translated these patterns into an experience designed specifically for Gen Z communities.
04
Building an Accessible and Playful Brand
Flock did not have an established brand identity when I joined, so I created a visual system that could feel playful and distinctly Gen Z while remaining clean and functional across the product.
I developed the color palette by testing different text and background combinations against WCAG accessibility standards. Rather than treating every brand color as interchangeable, I defined intentional pairings for text, buttons, backgrounds, and decorative elements. I also tested the palette across product interfaces and social media graphics to ensure it remained readable, visually comfortable, and recognizable in different contexts.
Typography balanced personality with usability. Expressive typefaces were reserved for the logo, headings, and accents, while cleaner fonts supported longer descriptions, navigation, and interface elements. This allowed Flock to retain its playful voice without sacrificing readability.
Together, the colors, typography, mascots, and illustrations created a flexible brand system that could communicate belonging, playfulness, and trust across both the product and Flock’s social presence.
05
Discovery with Intention
I reorganized Explore around location, featured communities, trending activity, and upcoming events.
Location made recommendations immediately relevant. Featured sections gave Flock a way to curate promising communities, while trending sections surfaced social momentum and rewarded active organizers with greater visibility. Upcoming events helped users move from open-ended browsing toward something they could attend.
Rather than presenting a directory, Explore offered several ways into the experience: through timing, popularity, community identity, location, or direct search.
06
Designing Trust Before the Meetup
Joining an offline gathering involves more vulnerability than joining an online group, so I treated trust as a core product requirement.
Event and community pages surfaced:
Host identities and profiles
Attendees and capacity
Shared interests
Community size and event history
Clear dates, locations, prices, and expectations
FAQs and refund policies
Public, private, and request-to-join states
Onboarding also helped people build recognizable profiles through interests, mascot avatars, and conversational prompts. Together, these details helped users understand not only what they were attending, but who they might meet and whether they would feel comfortable there.
*Check out the clever zodiac roast I added in the onboarding which help us go viral on social media!
07
From Official Events to Casual Meetups
Research with community organizers revealed an important problem: hosts wanted to keep their communities active, but many felt overwhelmed by the effort required to repeatedly produce elaborate events.
Official events often required a venue, agenda, ticketing, supplies, promotion, and facilitation. Communities still wanted to connect between these occasions, but hosts did not always have the bandwidth to organize them.
This insight led to Meetups.
Events were structured experiences organized by official community hosts. Meetups were smaller, lower-production gatherings that allowed members to spend time together between official events.
The intended journey became:
Discover a community → Attend an event → Meet compatible people → Organize smaller meetups → Build lasting friendships
07
Reducing the Risk of Making Plans
Members often had ideas for casual gatherings but hesitated to create them because they did not know whether anyone would attend. An unsuccessful meetup could feel personally embarrassing.
To reduce that social risk, I designed a proposal system. A member could suggest an activity and set an interest threshold—for example, five people. Once enough members expressed interest, the proposal could become a confirmed meetup.
This allowed members to test demand before committing while helping communities become less dependent on one official host.
08
Designing Within Constraints
Members often had ideas for casual gatherings but hesitated to create them because they did not know whether anyone would attend. An unsuccessful meetup could feel personally embarrassing.
To reduce that social risk, I designed a proposal system. A member could suggest an activity and set an interest threshold—for example, five people. Once enough members expressed interest, the proposal could become a confirmed meetup.
This allowed members to test demand before committing while helping communities become less dependent on one official host.
09
Outcome + Learnings
Flock evolved from a basic discovery website into a branded, cross-platform social product. It has since grown to more than 12,000 users. This project strengthened my ability to connect research with product strategy, design interconnected systems, and solve for both functional and emotional barriers. It also taught me to trust my research, communicate my reasoning, and advocate for my decisions when collaborating with more experienced teammates.
Design for emotional barriers
Users had ideas for gatherings but feared no one would attend. I designed proposals with interest thresholds, allowing an idea to become a confirmed meetup only after enough people showed interest. This taught me to design not only for what users need to do, but also for what makes them hesitate.
Think in systems
Designing Flock end to end taught me that every feature was connected. Onboarding shaped recommendations, profiles created trust, events introduced people, and meetups helped those relationships continue. Each decision needed to support both the immediate interaction and the larger journey toward offline connection.