Cvent
Feb. 2024 - June 2025
5 PMs, 4 Dev Teams, 1 UX team
UI/UX Design, Prototyping, UX Research
I played a key role in launching Cvent Essentials, collaborating with a large team to fill a significant gap in the market. Our beta program confirmed that we had a strong product-market fit, with many users expressing disappointment if it were discontinued. As 58% of event teams plan more small, in-person events by 2025-2026, Cvent Essentials is designed to help manage these efficiently. Since its launch, it has been widely adopted and praised for enhancing workflow efficiency.
My initiative in revitalizing the engagement panel not only prepared us for the launch of Cvent Essentials, but it also led to improvements across several Cvent product areas, fostering cross-team collaboration among various design and development teams.
“The simplicity of Cvent Essentials is unparalleled. This product is revolutionary.”
Design leadership created this timeline that planned out the entire beta design phase from start to finish. Building a product from the ground up is a daunting task, but thankfully we were able to utilize our internal design system, Carina, and our existing product, Cvent Webinar, to act as the backbones of this project.
From this point forward, we aimed to answer this question over the course of the next 3 months:
How will we transform existing infrastructure to fit the needs of an organizer planning and hosting a small, in-person event?
I used patterns from of our product, Webinar, as well as the design language and components from Carina to quickly build and iterate on ideas that made Essentials what it is today. However, my efforts into Essentials extended far beyond this three month period.
In this case study, I’ll focus on my initiative to modernize the engagement panel, which prepared us for the Cvent Essentials launch and drove improvements across multiple products like Attendee Hub, Webinar, and Exhibitor Portal which fostered cross-team collaboration.
The engagement panel is a space for attendees to interact during events and enables moderators and speakers to manage participation. This feature is used across multiple Cvent products for events of all sizes and industries.
The initial ask was to "modernize the engagement panel." To clarify the problem and scope, we turned to user feedback for deeper insights.
User feedback that we received was related to improving accessibility, having reply or threading functionality, and making the messages feel more human
Modernizing the engagement panel highlighted several user pain points. For each problem, I partnered with the PM to define the problem, researched how other services addressed it, and iterated on designs before handing them off to developers."
Adding clarity to the labels is an example of a problem that was simple and straightforward.
But of course, not all problems were that simple, and sometimes we'd have to work backwards to re-evaluate solutions and ideas.
And files start looking like this after several rounds of iteration across different problems under the same project
After several rounds of iteration, I finally arrived at a final design. Final conversations are had with the developers to ensure we're on the same page and to address any development concerns. Then, I move on to the next project until the developer reaches out to conduct a review together, ensuring everything is implemented properly.
And what I showed today is just the tip of the iceberg! The engagement panel was just my favorite part of this project :)
Launching a product of this scale from 0 to 1 and leading initiatives within this massive entity was not easy! I learned initiating regular syncs with the team and looping in as many people ASAP was crucial in keeping everyone on the same page and moving effectively.
The process wasn't perfect, but this also taught me how to effectively form decisions given large amounts of feedback. I've never had to report and share with so many stakeholders, so it was definitely a bumpy road to reaching the finish line.
Overall, I'm very thankful to be a part of this team to launch this project.
© 2025 Noah Longhi. All Rights Reserved.
