Plana

Event Planning App

Consumer App Vibe-Coded Prototype 0→1 Product Design

Problem

There are apps that help people find a time that works for everyone, and apps that send out invites once everything's decided, but nothing that streamlines the whole process in between.

Team

Solo

Role

UX/UI Designer

Duration

1 week

Key Outcome

Designed a single flow that closes the gap between scheduling tools and invite tools, so a group can go from a loose "we should hang out sometime" to a locked-in event without ever leaving the app.

What I Drove

Research User Interviews Design Prototyping Vibe Coding with Claude

Product

Plana is a mobile app that helps friends actually lock in plans. It polls everyone on times and locations, organizes who's bringing what, and sends out cute, shareable invites, replacing the scattered group chat thread with one streamlined flow.

Tools & Skills

Figma Claude HTML/CSS/JS

You are now viewing:

01 Solution

For the plans that still need figuring out.

Creating a plan in Plana, choosing Let's figure it out, and adding multiple time options

Turning an Idea into a Plan

Add multiple times and locations for polling
Create an invite without knowing all the details yet
Get an automatic, ready-to-send invite card

View Prototype →

Opening a plan from Waiting on You on the Plana home screen and completing the poll

Full Look at the Plans

Immediately see what plans need your input
Choose what works for you with just a tap
No need for endless group chat planning

02 Research

Scheduling isn't the hard part. Landing on a plan is.

During the summer, I kept noticing my friends struggle to lock down plans. Texts got buried in the group chat, and half the time nobody agreed on where or when.

User Interviews

Talked to 10 people in their 20s about scheduling pain points
No one tracked the overlap between everyone's free times
Plans kept changing, so nobody remembered who was actually coming

Competitive Research

Compared apps like When2Meet and Partiful
Some nail availability polling, others nail invites, none do both
People love Partiful specifically for how fun and polished its invites feel

Key Finding

There's no app for scheduling half-baked plans. It needs to cut the back-and-forth, but still feel fun enough that people actually want to use it.

03 Define

These pain points pointed to a single design challenge:

How might I take event planning from gathering input on times and locations to a confirmed invite, all in one app?

04 Design

Solving "let's figure it out"

The hardest part was keeping the flow fast and flexible enough to fit any kind of plan, in person or online, formal or casual. Since nobody tracks everyone's availability upfront, I decided to incorporate a "Let's figure it out" option: hosts propose a few tentative times and locations, friends can add their own, and everyone polls on what actually works.

Wireframe of the Make a Plan screen with tentative time options

Wireframe of a guest polling on availability with a notification of what's left to answer

Wireframe of the home screen showing plans that need a response, with Respond buttons

I also wanted every plan to generate a shareable invite card automatically, and for anyone with something left to answer to get notified, so plans keep moving instead of stalling out.

Setting the mood.

I started with a mood board to find the right feel: sketched icons, cute card invitations, and a personal touch, built for a young audience in their 20s.

Mood board reference: polaroid photo collage with a handwritten, personal feel

Mood board reference: a formal card invite with a wax-seal envelope motif

Mood board reference: a playful illustrated site with a countdown and mini-game

Mood board reference: a black and white invite with hand-drawn illustration

Mood board reference: a vintage dinner party invite with a wax seal

Mocking up the first screens.

From there, I built three mockup screens to get a feel for the overall vibe before going any further.

Bringing it to life with Claude.

I brought that same mood into Claude to build out the rest of the screens and a working prototype, carrying the sketched icons through to the most important ones. The location step alone covers in-person, online, and undecided plans, with bring-list and link fields built right in. Past plans automatically become memories, where friends can add their own photos to hold onto them.

Final Where's the event screen with location search, online option, what to bring, and add links

05 Impact

Metrics that would tell me the app is actually working.

If I shipped this, these are the numbers I'd watch to know Plana is solving the problem, not just getting downloads.

Percent of Events Finalized

The core promise: how often a loose idea actually becomes a locked-in plan

Event Creation Completion Rate

Whether the creation flow is smooth enough to finish in one sitting

Invite Completion Rate

How much friction is left once it's a guest filling out the form

Total Events Created

Overall adoption and whether people come back to plan again

06 Reflection

My Takeaways

The real bottleneck in group planning isn't finding a time, it's that no one owns getting the plan across the finish line. Building in visible reminders for exactly what's still unanswered ended up mattering more than any scheduling logic. It also pushed me to think harder about designing for messy, half-formed decisions instead of clean, finished ones.

I also learned how much faster I can move by using Claude as part of my process, both for building a working prototype and for catching edge cases and logic gaps I'd missed. Getting quick, direct feedback helped me iterate faster while staying close to my own ideas, and it's a workflow I want to keep using going forward.