Catchup — Communities, Activities & Experiences

Finding Your People Shouldn't Depend on Who Has Your Number

When I moved to a new city, I wanted to meet people who liked the same things I did: running, reading, building things.

In Sri Lanka, that usually means waiting for someone to add you to a WhatsApp group, or finding a Facebook post by luck.

The events are out there. Discovery is the problem. And going alone to an event run by a stranger feels risky.

So Catchup had two jobs: make events easy to discover, and make people feel safe enough to show up.

Four Roles, One Ecosystem

Catchup is a Sri Lanka-first platform for discovering and organising community events. Think Meetup, localised for how people here actually live.

I led the UX and UI end to end, solo, in two weeks: from domain research to a high-fidelity design across four user roles.

The client chose a free-first strategy: no event fees for the first two to three years, adoption before revenue. That one decision shaped the whole product. Catchup is designed for four roles and launches with three. Venue owners join in Phase 2.

Attendees

Discover and participate in communities and events

Find interesting activities, join communities, and attend events.

Organizers

Create communities and organize events

Build your community, create events and manage attendees with easy tools.

Venue Owners

Provide spaces for events

List your venue, manage bookings and connect with organizers.

Admins

Manage approvals, moderation and platform safety

Keep the platform safe and trustworthy for everyone.

The initial product focuses on communities, events, classes, bootcamps, sports, hiking, health and wellness, IT communities, local event discovery and local payment options. A future trip-planning experience was considered but intentionally kept outside the MVP scope.

An AI-assisted workflow let me move from brief to high-fidelity design in two weeks.

Three Problems Under One Product

The hard part wasn't designing an events app. It was solving three problems underneath it.

Revenue. With a free-first model, the platform couldn't earn from tickets. It needed another business model.

Trust. Catchup asks strangers to meet strangers. People won't show up unless the product signals it's safe.

Four roles. Attendees, organisers, venue owners and admins each have different goals. One product had to serve all of them without feeling like four apps.

Starting With The Domain, Not The Screens

Before designing screens, I mapped the domain Catchup would operate in. I reviewed how Meetup works, how community events in Sri Lanka are promoted and booked today, how Koko fits into local payments, and worked through the brief in conversations with the client.

Mapping these areas together changed how I saw the product. Catchup isn't an event-ticketing app. It's a local community platform, where events are one outcome.

Three insights changed the design:

1. 01
   Most events are free.

   A ticket-based business model wouldn't work.

2. 02
   Venues are booked by phone and WhatsApp.

   Organisers have no record, and venue owners have no booking pipeline.

3. 03
   Koko is already trusted.

   It's a local BNPL (buy now, pay later) service people use every day.

Each insight became a product decision: free events by default, a venue booking flow, and Koko at checkout for paid events.

What the Brief Was Missing

The client's brief was "Meetup, localised," with a free-first strategy for the first two to three years.

My research found two gaps in that brief.

Koko made the MVP, since upfront payment was a core attendee pain point. Venue booking is designed and planned for Phase 2, once enough organisers are on the platform to make venues worth listing.

Four Roles, Four Sets Of Needs

These are proto-personas, built from domain research and client conversations, not user interviews. They're working hypotheses to validate through testing.

Nadeesha

Attendee · “The Cautious Joiner”

Age27

OccupationMarketing Executive

LocationColombo

Tech comfortHigh

“

I want to meet new people and try new things, but I'm not handing over money to a stranger's WhatsApp group for an event I know nothing about.

Goals

• Discover things to do outside work and existing friend groups — hiking, fitness, learning something new.
• Try an activity without financial risk before committing money.
• Find organizers and events she can trust are legitimate and well-run.

Pain Points

• No reliable way to judge if an organizer or event is trustworthy before showing up.
• Payment upfront for an unknown event feels risky — no refund clarity, no track record.
• Relies on scattered Facebook/WhatsApp groups with no structure, ratings, or filtering.
• Limited free time — doesn't want to dig through irrelevant listings.

Needs

• Free events to try first, with paid options clearly marked and reasonably priced.
• Visible organizer ratings and reviews before she joins.
• Simple search and filter by category, location, date, and price.
• A map view to see what's happening nearby without much effort.

Dinal

Organizer · “The Side-Hustle Leader”

Age34

OccupationFreelance fitness coach — weekend hiking trips and bootcamp classes

LocationKandy

Tech comfortMedium

“

I've built a solid group of regulars, but growing beyond word-of-mouth means looking more professional than a WhatsApp group admin — and I need people to trust me before they'll show up.

Goals

• Grow his attendee base beyond his existing circle.
• Be seen as a credible, professional organizer, not just a hobbyist.
• Spend less time on admin and more time actually running events.

Pain Points

• No way to demonstrate a track record to new, unfamiliar attendees.
• Finding a decent, affordable venue involves a lot of manual searching and calling around.
• Tracking who has paid, confirmed or is waitlisted across WhatsApp is error-prone.
• No visibility into which events are actually working.

Needs

• A public profile with ratings and reviews to build credibility over time.
• Venue suggestions when setting up a physical event.
• A simple dashboard showing attendance and basic performance per event.
• An easy way to run free events immediately, with paid events layered in later.

Ruwani

Venue Owner · “The Underused Space Owner”

Age45

OccupationOwns a small community hall / event space

LocationGalle

Tech comfortLow–medium

“

My hall sits empty most weekday evenings. I just don't have a way to reach the kind of people who'd actually want to book it.

Goals

• Fill unbooked time slots with paying organizers instead of occasional word-of-mouth bookings.
• Earn extra, fairly passive income from a space she already owns.
• Keep the booking process simple — she has no time for a complex system.

Pain Points

• No visibility to organizers who are actively looking for a venue like hers.
• Handles all inquiries and bookings manually by phone — slow and easy to lose track of.
• Uncertain how commission and fees work, and wary of anything opaque.

Needs

• A straightforward venue profile — photos, capacity, pricing, availability.
• Clear, simple booking requests she can accept or decline.
• A dashboard that plainly shows bookings, earnings, and Catchup’s commission.

Chamith

Admin · “The Trust & Safety Gatekeeper”

Age30

OccupationOperations / Trust & Safety at Catchup

LocationColombo

Tech comfortHigh

“

One bad actor slipping through and organizing something harmful could undo all the trust we're trying to build. I need to catch problems early, without becoming the bottleneck.

Goals

• Keep the platform safe from fraudulent or harmful groups and events.
• Catch problematic activity early, before it reaches attendees.
• Scale moderation as the platform grows, without reviewing everything manually forever.

Pain Points

• At launch, every group and event needs manual review — this does not scale.
• No easy way to prioritise what is genuinely risky versus routine approvals.
• Limited signals early on — new organizers have no history to evaluate against.

Needs

• A centralised approval queue for new organizers, groups and flagged events.
• Clear alerts for reported content, prioritised by severity.
• The ability to quickly suspend or remove a group, event or user.

From Pain Points To Problem Statements

Each problem statement maps to a specific part of the product, grouped into three themes.

Supporting that core direction: local payments to make participation more accessible, venue connections to help organizers find suitable spaces, and trust & safety to make the ecosystem safer.

Prioritised by impact against build effort

Ratings, free events, moderation and Koko shipped first. Each removes a launch blocker: trust, access, safety and cost. Venue booking is high impact but depends on organisers already being active, so it moved to Phase 2. Trips was deferred entirely: high effort with unproven demand. The matrix is why the MVP launches with three roles instead of four.

I placed each problem statement on an impact vs. effort matrix, and it drove the key scope calls.

• Organiser trust (#2) was solved first with ratings. High impact, low effort.
• Venue reach (#7) was solved with a venue booking flow. High impact and more effort, but worth it because it's also the platform's revenue stream.
• Trips never made it onto the MVP matrix. High effort and unproven demand, so it was deferred.

The matrix kept the MVP focused on what the platform needs to launch.

MVP and What Comes Later

Not every feature could ship at once, so I split scope into MVP and post-launch.

MVP: everything the platform needs on day one.

Post-launch: Trips, recurring events, and deeper venue analytics.

The priority matrix set the line, not personal preference.

Free-first, with paid events from day one. Most events are free, and paid ones offer Koko instalments so upfront cost isn't a barrier. The venue owner role is fully designed and launches in Phase 2.

Organized Around Discovery & Participation

The main attendee experience was structured around two jobs — finding something worth doing, and keeping track of what you've joined. Organizer, venue owner and admin experiences become role-specific workspaces rather than separate products. The venue owner workspace is fully structured but launches in Phase 2.

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The full working board — personas, problem-to-solution map, information architecture and priority matrix:

Eight Journeys Across Four Roles

Each journey below expands into the step sequence that shaped the flows:

Validating Structure Before Polish

The wireframe stage focused on validating structure and interaction before any visual polish. The first set covered eight screens:

Translating Structure Into Interface

The visual design translates the validated structure into a clear, accessible and scalable interface — built to carry four different role experiences without becoming four different products.

Connecting The Critical Journeys

The high-fidelity prototype connects the journeys that carry the most product risk — discovery, payment, creation and governance:

The prototype in motion — moving through discovery, the event page and the join flow:

Demo — enrol in a paid event

Recorded on device: event details, checkout, and payment with Koko instalments.

What The Prototype Needs To Prove

The prototype is designed to be tested with representative users from each role. These are the questions each test needs to answer:

Five Rules That Settled The Arguments

How Success Would Be Measured

This is a concept case study — the measures below are the ones the product should be judged on once built and tested, not results already achieved.

Final Takeaway

Catchup started as an idea for a local version of Meetup. Through the early UX process the opportunity became broader — value for attendees through discovery and participation, for organizers through community and event management, for venue owners through new booking opportunities, and for admins through governance and trust. Venue booking went to Phase 2. It's the revenue engine, but it only works once organisers are active. Launching it too early would have meant empty listings.