Context
Let’s Do This has been the world’s leading marketplace for endurance events for several years. People use the platform to discover and book races, but once the booking was done, their relationship with the product ended.
Through continuous discovery, we found a clear unmet need: users didn’t just want to find events, they wanted inspiration, motivation, and connection. They cared about what their friends and peers were signing up for.
This insight became the foundation for building a social marketplace, where people could follow one another, see activity, and be inspired to do more.
Megan S - User Research Participant
My role
As Principal Product Designer, I was responsible for:
Defining the vision and design of the social marketplace.
Leading continuous discovery to validate opportunities.
Designing the entire app consumer experience from scratch.
Creating a new design system to scale across the app marketplace and social features.
Partnering with Product and Engineering to deliver a working MVP and iterate.
Approach
1. From transactions → to community
Why did we undertake this piece of work?
Business need → Competing 1:1 with other registration platforms would only take us so far. To truly differentiate we needed something unique that would help organizers grow their business.
Social+ insight → “...The best version of every consumer product is the one that’s intrinsically social... Any product that has a social component baked in has fundamental and asymmetric advantages over competing non-social products in that category.” Community Takes All: The Power of Social+
User research → We’d consistently heard that a pain point for participants was only finding out a friend had done an event afterwards on Instagram or Strava. We felt we could position ourselves as the social discovery platform to let you plan for the future with your friends.
2. Continuous Discovery
I conducted regular interviews with both existing and new users, as well as the organisers themselves. Patterns emerged: both user types wanted to see what their peers were doing so they wouldn't miss out, and organisers wanted better tools to grow their communities and ultimately sell more tickets.
3. Zero → One Design
In collaboration with my squad we shaped the product from the ground up, moving from sketches to prototypes to production. I focused on balancing social connection with transactional clarity, so the product still delivered on the business model of event bookings.
4. Design System
I built a new design system to unify the marketplace with new social features. This ensured visual consistency, faster iteration, and scalability as new features rolled out.
Solution
We launched the first version of the social marketplace, including:
Follow & Social Graph → users could follow friends and see their activity.
Activity Feed → showing event sign-ups and inspiration from people you know.
Profiles → highlighting upcoming and past events, creating identity in the app.
Community → helping users connect and be inspired by like-minded people.
Seamless Booking Flow → social activity always connected directly to event discovery and registration.
How we measured success?
While we tracked a range of health metrics (weekly downloads, MAUs, etc.), our primary focus was weekly networked app users and the share of incremental bookings driven by the network.
Weekly networked app users → The number of users who became networked each week. Within 10 months, we averaged 1k+ users per week who downloaded the app and connected with at least three friends.
% Network Driven Incremental Bookings → The proportion of total bookings attributable to social features, such as seeing a friend’s booking notification or interest on the feed.
Weekly Networked App Users
% Network Driven Incremental Bookings
What impact did it have?
The social layer wasn’t just shipped, it changed behaviour. It drove new users, repeat engagement, and direct revenue impact through socially-driven bookings.
Helped unlock new sales opportunities → This is a true differentiator vs other registration products in the market by offering additional bookings via the network.
New revenue for existing organisers → Strengthened relationships with existing organisers by providing additional bookings via the network.
Repositioned us as the social marketplace → Consumers learnt that this is a space to discover events with their friends.
Learnings
There were a lot of learnings but here are just a few:
Design for motivation & belonging → Features only matter if they tap into real human drivers.
Continuous discovery is a multiplier → Kept us aligned with genuine needs.
Design systems scale impact → Faster delivery, fewer inconsistencies.
Invest earlier in social sharing → Leverage off-platform sharing to improve acquisition in an organic way.