Designing a community platform for real-world clubs

Build IRL is a platform for starting and running in-person clubs. It replaces the patchwork of tools most builders juggle — messaging, planning, RSVPs — with a single home, and gives joiners a real sense of a club's culture before they commit.

The problem sits on both sides of a club. Builders were burning out on logistics — juggling five-plus disconnected tools to run a single club. Joiners were hesitating — they couldn't tell what a club was really like without joining first. My job was to figure out which core flows and MVP features would ease that friction on both ends.

lower the logistical weight on builders and give joiners a real read on club culture — so both sides can commit with confidence?

We audited BuildIRL against its PRD, then benchmarked five adjacent platforms: Partiful, Luma, Meetup, Patreon, and Sweatpals.

This gave us a baseline for what BuildIRL was, what nearby products were doing, and where to look next.

We interviewed multiple club builders to get real, honest insights on what the current club space was looking like.

Through the interviews with builders across different community types, three insights kept surfacing:

"I spend hours on invitations and logistics. It's draining."

💡 Before touching a design, we wanted to know exactly why builders were burning out.

We turned interviews into affinity maps, personas, and insight statements — looking for the patterns that would give the design something concrete to solve for.

A glimpse into some of our affinity mapping sessions. We grouped data and research insights into clusters, then clusters into themes we could actually design around.

Four archetypes emerged from the clusters: two on the builder side, two on the joiner side. The Inclusive Builder wants a warm, welcoming club. The Broad Builder is scaling a bigger audience. The Future Builder might start their own club someday. The Pure Joiner just wants to show up. Each came with different needs, and the design had to serve all four without splintering into four different products.

We sketched, mapped user flows, and built lo-fi to mid-fi prototypes. Not pictured: the stakeholder meetings, the pivots, and the days everything on the wall got rearranged!

Research showed joiners hesitate when they can't see what a club is really like. The joiner flow surfaces vibe, interests, and personality upfront — so the decision to join isn't a blind leap.

The builder flow offers three entry points so builders can meet the product where they are: build from scratch if they have a clear vision, use AI for a jumpstart, or import from Instagram to keep existing branding intact.

💡 These walkthroughs show the "Create from scratch" path, "Generate from AI" path, and the "Import from Instagram" path.

Adaptability was the actual job. The project pivoted more times than I can count. Being ready to redesign a flow overnight wasn't a nice-to-have — it was the work.

Align early, align often. The design decisions that didn't get pushed back on were the ones I'd already walked stakeholders through days before.

Every design decision should point back to research. When I could tie a choice to a specific quote or affinity cluster, arguments about the design ended fast.

🎉 Onboarding completion rate — how many builders finish the setup flow after they start?

🚦 Drop-off points inside the creation flow — where does momentum die?

⏱️ Time-to-first-club — from install to a published club page, how long does it actually take?