Eventbrite App
ROLE
Senior/Staff Designer Design Systems
DATE
SERVICES
TEAM
about.
After more than a decade without a major update, Eventbrite made a strategic decision to refresh its brand and rebuild its consumer native app to meet modern expectations on iOS and Android. These efforts were tightly connected, and the first critical step was creating a new design system—Marmalade Gen 2—to bring the new brand into product and support rebuilding the app from the ground up.
This was a top company initiative, so I temporarily left my team to join the Design Systems team. I partnered closely with internal brand, product, and mobile engineering teams, as well as external agencies Buck and Instrument, collaborating through daily standups and critiques as the system evolved alongside active product development.
I played two complementary roles:
Design systems contributor, defining foundational principles and core, native-first components that scaled across iOS and Android.
End-to-end flow designer, owning key attendee experiences including ticketing, checkout, refunds, and related purchase flows—allowing me to pressure-test the system in real product contexts.
Working across both system and flow levels ensured Marmalade Gen 2 became a practical, scalable foundation for Eventbrite’s next-generation consumer app.
challenge.
How does a ticketing service grow into a dynamic, personalized platform? Eventbrite set out to evolve beyond simple transactions, transforming into a vibrant space for discovery, community, and connection—an essential marketplace for shared human experiences.
We weren’t just redesigning components—we were rebuilding trust in the system while the ground was actively shifting.
Eventbrite was working in parallel with two external agencies—one defining the new brand and another redesigning key product flows—while internal teams rebuilt the native attendee app and uncovered long-standing system issues. All of this happened on tight, overlapping timelines, creating a fast-moving and complex environment.
Key challenges included:
Operationalizing an evolving brand while designing and shipping Marmalade Gen 2 in real time.
Supporting uneven platform maturity, with flows split across web and native and some critical capabilities missing from the app.
Balancing native conventions with brand consistency across iOS and Android.
Making intentional MVP tradeoffs under time pressure while minimizing long-term system debt.
Rebuilding trust in a fragmented system landscape, shaped by legacy, unmaintained design systems and siloed, globally distributed teams.
The challenge wasn’t just scale—it was alignment: shipping quickly while building a system teams could trust and grow with.
results.
Marmalade Gen 2 became the foundation for Eventbrite’s redesigned attendee experience and reshaped how design systems work happened across the company.
Enabled a 0→1 native app launch in under 8 months, delivering a fully redesigned attendee app on iOS and Android aligned with Eventbrite’s new brand.
Established a robust system at scale, including 28 new components, a comprehensive token foundation, and 70+ screens and end-to-end flows built and shipped using Marmalade Gen 2.
Reduced fragmentation and rework across iOS and Android by defining clear, shared patterns that balanced platform conventions with a cohesive brand expression.
Improved accessibility and consistency across critical attendee journeys such as ticketing, checkout, and refunds.
Increased trust and adoption by embedding directly with product teams and designing the system in real product contexts rather than as a centralized, abstract library.
Modernized Eventbrite’s visual identity in product, creating a fresher, more expressive experience designed to resonate with Gen Z and newer generations of users.
testimonial.
When we needed to add velocity to the internal design systems team during the Eventbrite app rollout and rebrand, Kaitlin was a natural choice as far as someone senior and experienced in systems at speed.
Mikaila Hillman
Principal Product Designer
