EventedEvented is a platform where clients can book assistance with their planned events and browse a rental catalog for all things events.
Role: UX/UI Designer, Brand Designer, Web Designer
Timeline: 2026 (Design Portfolio Project)
Tools: WordPress, Adobe Photoshop, Canva, Figma
Type: Full-service event planning and rental booking platform
Design a modern, feminine event services platform that makes booking event planning, rentals, and decor feel effortless, whilst inspiring & serving everyone from brides planning intimate weddings and organizers coordinating large-scale events to families planning personal parties.
THE cHALLENGE...
Empathize
Research Approach
Customer Interviews
I conducted interviews with participants in their early-to-mid twenties who were actively planning or had recently planned a personal event — birthday parties, bridal showers, and celebrations on a modest budget. Sessions were 20–30 minutes and focused on their planning process, where they look for inspiration, how they find vendors, and what frustrations they hit along the way.
Key themes that emerged:
Participants relied heavily on Instagram and Pinterest for inspiration but felt frustrated that the content rarely included pricing or sourcing information — beautiful ideas with no actionable path forward.
Party supply stores like Hobby Lobby were common fallbacks, but participants described the decor as "tacky" or "dated" — they wanted elevated pieces without the boutique price tag.
Renting decor rather than buying it was appealing in concept but hard to find locally — most participants didn't know rental services like this existed at an accessible price point.
Transparency was critical — participants wanted to see a clear rental catalog with photos, pricing, and availability before reaching out, rather than having to request a quote blind.
The booking process itself was a major source of anxiety; participants wanted something that felt as intuitive as shopping online, not like filling out a vendor contract.
Research Approach
To understand the people who would use Evented — from personal party planners to couples and social-media-savvy celebrators — I conducted a mixed-methods research approach combining direct user interviews with competitive analysis of existing event rental and planning platforms. I reviewed competitors like The Bash, Zola, and local event rental companies, examining how they present their catalogs, communicate pricing, and guide users through the booking process.
A central tension I identified early was the gap between Pinterest-level aesthetic inspiration and real-world budget constraints — most aspirational event content online implies a $10,000+ budget, leaving the average person feeling like a beautiful, elevated event is out of reach. Evented's opportunity was to bridge that gap: making professional-quality event experiences accessible, browsable, and bookable without the overwhelm or the price tag of a full event planner.
Key research questions I set out to answer:
What does someone planning a personal event actually struggle with most — finding ideas, finding vendors, or managing cost?
How does social media influence event planning expectations, and does it help or hurt the planning process?
What makes an event rental platform feel trustworthy enough to book from without an in-person consultation?
Where do budget-conscious planners currently go, and why do those solutions fall short?
Customer Interviews
Define
Persona Development
Problem Statements
Through research synthesis, one primary user emerged at the heart of the Evented experience.
Meet Madi Parker — "The Experience Curator" "I want to throw an Instagram-worthy birthday without breaking the bank."
Age: 24 | Gender: Female | Location: Norman, Oklahoma
Occupation: Social Media Coordinator | Income: $42,000/year
Madi is turning 25 and wants to throw a birthday party for 40–50 friends that looks stunning on Instagram. She has a ~$2,000 budget and can't afford a full event planner, but she knows exactly what she wants — rented backdrops, ambient lighting, and curated decor pieces that give the evening a polished, editorial feel. She's creative and happy to DIY some elements, but wants professional, high-quality rentals for the "wow factor" moments. She lives on social media, sees every event as a content opportunity, and wants her party to reflect her aesthetic and get real engagement.
She’s aiming to rent decor that makes her party feel Instagram-worthy and elevated, stay within her $2,000 budget without sacrificing visual impact and navigate an easy rental process with clear, upfront pricing.
She’s currently frustrated with party supply stores that carry decor that feels generic and outdated, and most event rental companies don't have transparent online catalogs, forcing her into a back-and-forth inquiry process before she even knows if it's affordable.
Persona Development
With Madi's goals and frustrations defined, I anchored the Evented design around the following core problem statements:
How Might We:
How might we make a rental catalog feel as visually inspiring as Pinterest while also being immediately actionable?
How might we design a booking experience that gives budget-conscious planners confidence and clarity from browse to checkout?
Problem Statements
Ideate
Brainstorming
Storyboarding
User Flows
With Madi's problem statements in mind, I moved into divergent ideation using rapid sketching and mind mapping to explore what the Evented platform experience could be. Ideas generated included:
A visual rental catalog organized by event type (birthday, wedding, baby shower, corporate) with filter options by style, color, and price range
An "Build Your Look" feature allowing users to select multiple rental items and see a total estimated cost before booking
A mood board or inspiration gallery curated by event type to help users like Madi translate Pinterest inspiration into actual rentable pieces
Transparent per-item pricing displayed directly on product cards — no "request a quote" required for standard items
A "Most Instagrammed" or "Fan Favorites" section surfacing the most popular rental pieces to guide decision-making
An easy booking request form that captures event date, location, item list, and headcount in under two minutes
A styled event gallery showing real client events using Evented rentals to bridge the gap between product catalog and real-world results
After narrowing by impact and feasibility, I focused the design on: a browsable, photo-forward rental catalog with upfront pricing, a streamlined booking flow, and editorial-quality visual design that makes the platform feel as aspirational as the events it helps create.
Brainstorming
I storyboarded Madi's core journey: she's scrolling Instagram and sees a beautiful birthday setup → searches for affordable event rentals in her area and finds Evented → lands on the homepage and immediately feels the platform's aesthetic matches her vision → browses the rental catalog filtered by "Birthday" and finds a neon sign, balloon column, and velvet backdrop within her budget → adds items to her event wishlist and sees a running total → submits a booking request with her event date → receives a quick confirmation and feels excitement rather than anxiety about her party planning.
Two emotional moments stood out: the homepage first impression (does this platform get my aesthetic?) and the catalog browsing experience (can I actually afford this?). Both became primary design priorities.
Storyboarding
User Flows
I mapped Madi's primary user flow : homepage → rental catalog → filtered product browse → item detail → add items or package to cart → checkout page. This flow shaped Evented's navigation structure and determined which pages needed the most design investment — the catalog and product detail pages emerged as the heart of the experience.
Prototype
Low Fidelity
Branding & UI Kit
Final Design
I began with hand-sketched wireframes to establish information hierarchy and layout logic before any visual design decisions were made. Key low-fidelity decisions included placing the rental catalog CTA prominently above the fold on the homepage, designing the catalog page around a grid of large product photos with price tags visible on hover, and keeping the booking form to a single page with no more than six fields. These wireframes were validated against Madi's user flow before moving to high fidelity.
Low Fidelity
Branding & UI Kit
Evented's visual identity was built around modern feminine elegance — the platform needed to feel aspirational and editorial without being intimidating or overly luxurious.
Color Palette: Soft blush and warm cream as the primary palette, with rich gold accents to add elevation. Deep charcoal for body text keeps the design grounded and legible against the soft backgrounds.
Typography: A refined serif for headlines to communicate sophistication and event-world glamour, paired with a lightweight bitter for navigation and body copy for modern contrast. A special note is the Beth Ellen, a classy text used for the logo and special text mentions.
Imagery Style: Styled event photography that shows rentals in real, beautiful contexts — not product-on-white-background shots — to help users like Madi visualize the items at their own events. These images are from actual events from Evented, further proving expertise and credibility in the field.
Components: Designed UI kit including product cards with pricing, category filter chips, booking request form, navigation, hero banners, testimonial blocks, and a styled event gallery — all built for elegance, consistency, and mobile responsiveness.
Final Design
The final high-fidelity designs brought the brand system and wireframe architecture into a fully realized platform built on WordPress with Figma as the design tool. The homepage leads with a bold, styled hero and a direct path into the rental catalog. The catalog page is photo-forward with visible pricing and intuitive filters. The product detail page surfaces rental logistics (availability, deposit, delivery info) clearly so Madi never has to wonder about the fine print. The overall experience communicates that a beautiful, elevated event is within reach — and that Evented is the partner to make it happen.
Test
Feedback
Priority Revisions
Reflections
I conducted usability testing with participants matching Madi's profile — young women in their mid-twenties planning personal events on a modest budget, highly active on social media — using the live WordPress prototype. Participants were asked to complete two tasks: (1) browse the rental catalog and identify three items that fit a birthday party aesthetic within a $500 rental budget, and (2) complete a booking request for a specific event date.
Key feedback themes:
The homepage aesthetic immediately resonated — participants used words like "cute," "aesthetic," and "I'd actually use this" within the first few seconds.
Participants loved seeing pricing directly on the product cards — several noted it was the thing they wish every rental company did.
The catalog filter system was appreciated but participants wanted to filter by price range specifically, not just event type or style.
The booking form felt clean and manageable, but one participant wanted a date picker instead of a text field for event date to reduce ambiguity.
A few participants asked about delivery and setup — they assumed Evented handled it but wanted that confirmed somewhere visible before booking, not just in a FAQ.
Mobile experience was generally strong but product image galleries needed smoother swipe behavior on touch screens.
Feedback
Based on test findings, I prioritized the following revisions:
Added a "Delivery & Setup" info section to product detail pages — surfacing logistics information in context so users feel informed before they reach the booking form.
Improved touch swipe behavior on mobile product galleries — ensuring the browsing experience feels as smooth on a phone as it does on desktop, given that Madi's primary device is her smartphone.
Priority Revisions
Evented was one of the most creatively energizing projects in my portfolio. Designing for a user like Madi, someone who lives and breathes aesthetics and sees every event as a moment worth capturing pushed me to think about design not just as function, but as feeling. The platform had to be beautiful enough to earn her trust before she even read a word.
The most important insight from this project was that transparency is its own form of hospitality: showing prices upfront, making logistics clear, and simplifying the booking process are all ways of saying "we respect your time and your budget." That's what turns a browsing visitor into a booked client.
If I were to extend this project, I'd build out a user account feature where clients can save wish lists, track past bookings, and share their event style boards, turning Evented into a long-term planning companion rather than a one-time transaction. I'd also explore an influencer partnership program, knowing that users like Madi would naturally share their Evented-styled events online, creating organic brand growth.
This case study reminded me that good design doesn't just solve problems, it creates experiences people genuinely want to be part of.
Reflections