CSUDH chapter platform
IEEE Event Management
A responsive event platform for the CSUDH IEEE student organization — reframed from marketing brochure to calendar hub so students can see what’s happening this week.
- CSUDH IEEE
- 2021
- UX Lead & Front-end
- Responsive web
Context
Students didn’t want a brochure. They wanted a calendar.
The CSUDH IEEE chapter needed a responsive platform so officers could post events and announcements — and students could actually show up. The old site contradicted hallway flyers. Officers answered the same questions on email and text.
Research
Where communication broke down.
- 11 semi-structured interviews + 4 stakeholder conversations
- Heuristic audit against Nielsen’s 10 heuristics
- Two-week diary study with 6 active members
- Competitive teardown of 7 peer chapter sites
Affinity mapping cut through the noise of our research, revealing three core jobs-to-be-done:
- “Help me decide if this event is worth my Tuesday night.”
- “Remind me before I forget.”
- “Tell me who’s behind this so I can go say hi.”
From these insights, we developed two primary personas—a curious freshman and an over-committed senior—and mapped their current journey to pinpoint exact moments of user frustration.
Reframe the homepage as a calendar, not a marketing brochure. Students wanted to scan what was happening this week.
Design detail
Officer directory with color rhythm.
Initials on bold color blocks — scannable and less intimidating for freshmen walking into a room.
Visuals
What it looks like.
I built the system in Figma against an 8-pt grid with a four-step type scale and a focused palette borrowed from the IEEE brand but warmed up for a campus audience. Wireframes went through three rounds of feedback before any pixels got pushed.
Key flows: discover → event detail → RSVP, recap-after-event, officer directory, and an admin event-creation flow that the board could use without training. I prototyped the RSVP flow in Figma and tested it with 8 students; one round of changes cut the steps from 5 to 3.
The Dashboard Navigation #after_usability_testing
Administrators for CSUDH needed to manage multiple complex databases (Users, Events, Announcements, Feedback) simultaneously. The problem with traditional top-navigation is that it limits vertical space and makes switching between complex data sets cumbersome. I solved this by implementing a persistent left-hand sidebar. This not only provided a scalable architecture if more features are added later, but it also maximized the horizontal screen real estate for the dense data tables, allowing admins to scan and manage records without visual clutter. Shown in images below.
The Members Directory
Directories can often become visually monotonous walls of text, causing users to experience ‘scanning fatigue’ when trying to find specific groups or individuals. I solved this by introducing large, color-coded visual anchors. This breaks up the cognitive load, creating a clear visual hierarchy that allows users to jump straight to the section they need much faster than a standard list.
The Authentication Flow
User onboarding and login flows often suffer from high drop-off rates if the interface feels distracting or overly complex. The problem was ensuring users could authenticate with zero friction. I solved this by stripping away all secondary navigation and employing a highly focused, centered-card layout. By removing visual noise, the design forces the user’s focus entirely onto the primary task of entering their credentials securely.
Outcomes
What changed.
Homepage reframed as a calendar, not a brochure
RSVP flow cut from 5 steps to 3
Officer directory with color-coded visual rhythm
Build & handoff
The problem
Why this mattered.
Students discovered events through hallway flyers and an outdated site with conflicting dates. Officers burned hours answering the same five questions. Freshmen felt intimidated walking into rooms with no faces attached.
Now booking · 2026
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