Personal Project
A password-protected group planning app that replaces scattered group texts and spreadsheets with one calm, shareable space—built end-to-end for a close friend celebration and designed to be reused for the next one.
Guests log in with a personal password, vote on dates and activities, weigh in on group decisions, submit dietary and RSVP details, and see a live snapshot of where the plan stands—all inside one private, installable app.
Identifying details, project information, and user data have been modified to protect client privacy.
Overview
Every friend group that has ever tried to plan a weekend away knows the problem: the group chat fills up with polls, half-answered questions, and “wait, what did we decide?” messages until nobody can find the actual plan anymore. For a multi-day celebration with a guest list, a shared budget, food preferences, activity choices, and travel logistics to track, that chaos gets expensive fast—not in dollars, but in the mental overhead of holding it all together.
This project is a private, guest-managed planning application built to solve that problem for a real friend group getaway. Instead of a public event platform, it is a small, purpose-built tool that only the group can access.
The app was designed, built, and deployed independently, then structured so the same system can be quietly reused as the template for a future gathering without starting from scratch.
The Challenge
Decisions were buried in chat threads, availability was difficult to update, food and accessibility needs could be missed until the last minute, and there was no single place anyone could check to see where things actually stood.
The experience needed to feel less like a form and more like a shared home base—something the group would actually want to open, while protecting details that were never meant for public view.
The Solution
The result is a private, installable app with a personal login for every guest, a tabbed workspace covering availability, group polls, food, activities, and final RSVP, plus a live-updating snapshot that turns individual responses into a shared group picture.
A dedicated admin workspace lets the host manage the guest list, adjust poll options, and review responses without reconstructing the plan from old messages.
My Role
I owned this project end-to-end: product strategy, UX and workflow design, UX writing, visual design, front-end development, database architecture, and deployment. I scoped what the tool needed to do, designed every screen and interaction, wrote all guest-facing copy, built the front end and backend integration, set up the private database and access model, and deployed and maintained the live app.
There was no external design, engineering, or backend team involved.
Product & Workflow Strategy
The tool was scoped around a real sequence: first, find overlapping availability; then decide the shape of the trip; then work through food, activities, and transportation; then collect a final commitment.
Reusability was a deliberate constraint from the start. Poll structures, activity options, and guest management were designed so the same system could be reconfigured for a future gathering instead of becoming a one-time build.
Key Capabilities
Every guest is added by the host and logs in with an individually assigned password. There is no public sign-up, account-creation friction, or public discovery.
A shared Home view summarizes where the group stands across availability, polls, and RSVPs without anyone manually tallying responses.
Guests weigh in on candidate dates, with a live ranking that surfaces the option with the strongest group overlap.
Polls cover the overall plan, setting, budget comfort, food style, attire, and transportation so choices do not remain scattered across messages.
Activity voting, dietary needs, shared-cost confirmations, accessibility, transportation, and notes to the host remain connected through the same experience.
User Journey & Operational Workflow
The experience begins with a private link and personal login. Guests land on the planning snapshot, then work through availability, group polls, activities, food preferences, and the final RSVP as the event moves from possibility to commitment.
On the host side, the workflow is equally deliberate: manage the guest list, adjust polls and activities as planning evolves, and review group responses in one place.
Host Admin Workspace
The host can add and manage guests, adjust poll questions and activity options, and review responses across availability, food, activities, and RSVPs.
The planning snapshot answers the host’s most common question—“where do things stand?”—without requiring a manual spreadsheet or a search through the chat history.
Privacy, Security & Data
There is no public sign-up. Every guest is individually added by the host, guest passwords are hashed rather than stored in plain text, and sessions expire after a defined period.
All reads and writes go through defined backend functions rather than direct, open table access. The underlying database structure and contents are not exposed to the client through unrestricted queries.
The project’s real backend URL, publishable key, live application address, and administrative address are not included anywhere in this case study.
Visual & Interaction Design
The visual identity uses deep berry and rose tones, cream backgrounds, and warm gold accents, with a serif display face for headlines and a clean sans-serif for functional content.
Interaction patterns prioritize clarity: selected options use a consistent filled-pill state, group responses remain readable rather than dense, and lightweight stat cards communicate status without asking guests to interpret raw tables.
Responsive & Cross-Platform Design
Layouts, typography, and tap targets were tuned for a comfortable phone experience, then scaled up for the host’s desktop review sessions.
As a Progressive Web App, it can be installed directly to a phone’s Home Screen and opened with an app-like icon and full-screen launch experience—without an app-store download.
Private, Guest-Managed Access
The host controls the guest list, and each invited person receives a personal password. The login experience stays simple for the group while avoiding public registration, searchable profiles, and unnecessary account setup.
Under the surface, guest passwords are hashed with pgcrypto and all reads and writes pass through defined Supabase PostgreSQL functions rather than unrestricted table access.
The front end uses vanilla JavaScript with ES modules, HTML, and CSS, is deployed on Vercel, and includes a manifest and custom icons for installable Progressive Web App delivery.
Iteration & Problem Solving
Each tab maps to a real bottleneck the group had encountered before, rather than a generic event-platform feature checklist.
The RPC-only access pattern required more structure up front but created clearer boundaries around the group’s private data.
Changes were reviewed in a local environment before reaching the live, in-use app, reducing the risk of disrupting guests mid-planning.
Guest management, polls, and activity systems can be reconfigured without rebuilding the product from scratch.
Outcome
The application replaced the group’s prior pattern of scattered chat-based planning with one structured, privacy-respecting home base. It was deliberately engineered for reuse so the system can support a future gathering rather than becoming a disposable one-time build.
Specific engagement, adoption, and satisfaction figures are not published here in keeping with the private nature of the project.
Key Takeaways
Purpose-built, not generic