Ketch-Up: a community platform tackling social isolation among women

Context

Ketch-Up is a community platform built around a founder's goal of tackling social isolation among women by making it easier to find and join local events and communities of other women.

Problem

Social isolation is a real but hard-to-design-for problem: the platform needed to make finding and attending events feel welcoming and low-friction, for women who might be reaching out precisely because connecting with others doesn't come easily.

My Role

This was an end-to-end UX project: I ran the research, synthesis, information architecture, and prototyping myself, and presented the finished work directly to Ketch-Up's founder and CEO.

Process

I wrote an interview script and conducted user interviews, alongside a competitive analysis of comparable community and events platforms. From that research I built a persona and a journey map, with accessibility and inclusivity considerations built directly into the journey map rather than treated as an afterthought.

With the journey mapped, I structured the product with a site map, then designed a Figma prototype of four key screens: homepage, event listing, event details, and checkout.

Key Insights

• Accessibility and inclusivity weren't separate checklist items — mapping them directly onto the journey map surfaced where the experience needed to accommodate different comfort levels and abilities at each step.
• Competitive analysis showed where comparable platforms handled event discovery and checkout well, and where Ketch-Up could do better for a user who may be more hesitant to engage.

Outcome

I presented the completed site map and four-screen prototype to Ketch-Up's founder and CEO, and received positive client feedback on the work.

What I'd Do Next

I'd want to usability-test the four prototyped screens with women who match the persona directly, to check that the accessibility and inclusivity considerations in the journey map actually hold up in a real checkout flow.