IceRed
Event management platform for a Hong Kong startup, built in under three months.
IceRed was an event management and organisation platform built for a Hong Kong startup. The constraint was time: full platform, three-month launch window, lean team.
Context
Three months is not enough time to design the platform and the system separately. Either you commit to a system from week one and take the upfront cost, or you ship a custom interface per surface and pay the cost on the back end every time the product needs to grow. The team chose the system route.
What I designed
A design system tight enough to define the platform, not a separate artefact alongside it. Every event-management surface (venues, attendees, schedules, communications) was composed from the same primitives. Tokens, layouts, and interaction patterns documented as we built so contributors could move without waiting on a centralised designer.
The decision that shaped it
Build the system in the product, not next to it. The conventional move on a three-month project is to skip the system entirely and ship custom screens for speed. We did the opposite: invest the first two weeks in the primitives, then compose the rest of the product from them. The bet was that the time saved on screen-by-screen work in weeks 6–12 would more than pay back the upfront tax.
What it changed
Platform shipped on the three-month timeline. The design system increased development speed by 25% measured against comparable scope, and the structure scaled past the launch with new features composing without new component work.
Role
Lead Product Designer. Owned the design system and the platform surfaces it generated.