Seco
Designing an event management platform for large-scale competitions
Product Designer • 3-4 Months • Seed
Simplifying complex operational workflows across organisers, judges and participants through a single digital platform.
At a glance
Role
Product Designer
Industry
B2B SaaS
Product
Event Management Platform
Team
Founder · Product · Engineering
Focus
Operations · CMS · Judging Platform
The story
Large competitions look simple from the outside.
Participants submit their work.
Judges score it.
Winners are announced.
Behind the scenes, it's a very different story.
Every event involves dozens of moving parts running in parallel. Categories need to be configured, submissions assigned, judges coordinated, scores moderated and results published.
Most of this was managed through spreadsheets, emails and manual coordination.
The challenge wasn't building another dashboard.
It was designing a system that could keep everyone aligned without making the platform harder to use.
The problem
One thing became obvious early on.
Nobody was struggling with the same problem.
Participants wanted a straightforward submission process.
Judges wanted to review entries quickly.
Organisers needed control over every stage of the event.
Administrators wanted visibility across the entire competition.
Engineering needed workflows that could scale to different event formats.
The product had to support all of them without feeling like five different systems stitched together.
Understanding the system
Before designing any screens, I mapped how information moved through the platform.
Seeing the entire lifecycle exposed something important.
Many usability issues weren't interface problems.
They were workflow problems.
Once those dependencies became visible, the product became much easier to simplify.
What I owned
My role extended beyond designing interfaces.
I worked across the product to simplify workflows before translating them into screens.
That included:
User flows
Information architecture
Wireframes
High-fidelity UI
Interactive prototypes
Design system
Product strategy
Cross-functional collaboration
Working closely with founders and engineers meant product decisions were continuously refined throughout development instead of being handed off at the end.
Designing for speed
The judging experience became one of the most important parts of the platform.
Judges often reviewed dozens of submissions in a single sitting.
Every extra click, page load or distraction slowed the evaluation process.
Instead of adding more information, I focused on removing everything that wasn't necessary.
The interface prioritised:
Clear scoring criteria
Context without clutter
Minimal navigation
Keyboard-friendly interactions
Fast progression between submissions
The goal wasn't to create a beautiful dashboard.
It was to help judges stay focused for long review sessions.
Making the platform adaptable
No two competitions run exactly the same way.
Some have multiple judging rounds.
Others use different scoring methods or submission requirements.
Instead of designing fixed workflows, I helped create a configurable CMS that allowed organisers to customise:
Event stages
Judging rounds
Scoring rubrics
Participant categories
Submission requirements
Publishing schedules
That meant new competitions could be configured without redesigning or rebuilding the product.
Organising around work, not data
One decision influenced almost every part of the platform.
Navigation wasn't organised around technical entities.
It was organised around the jobs people came to complete.
Grouping features around real tasks made a complex product easier to understand, especially for first-time users.
Building with engineering
Enterprise products don't become simpler by accident.
Every feature went through the same collaborative cycle.
Instead of handing designs to engineering, we worked together to refine product decisions throughout development.
That collaboration helped us solve operational problems much earlier in the process.
Outcomes
The redesign brought fragmented workflows into one operational system.
Some of the biggest improvements included:
Faster judging workflows
Better operational visibility
A configurable CMS for different competition formats
Reusable design foundations across the platform
Simpler navigation through large datasets
Less reliance on manual coordination
What I learned
SECO completely changed how I think about enterprise products.
The biggest challenge wasn't designing better interfaces.
It was understanding how work actually moved through the organisation.
Once those workflows became clear, the interface almost designed itself.
That's the biggest lesson I took away from this project.
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