Fova
2025
Reimagining NYC photowalks into a seamless platform
NYC hosts hundreds of photowalks year round, organized by independent creators and large meetup groups across multiple platforms. While interest is high, the end-to-end experience of finding a walk, coordinating logistics and engaging with the community is fragmented.
This project explored how a unified product could reduce friction and turn photowalk participation into a repeatable social habit rather than a one off event.
How product unification drove a 42% lift in meetup attendance
Fova replaced a fragmented ecosystem of Meetup, Instagram and WhatsApp with a unified platform for hosting, scheduling, tracking and communicating NYC photowalk events.
Problem area
When planning friction became an attendance problem
Photowalk communities relied on multiple platforms to manage events, creating friction in RSVPs and host attendee communication. Without a single source of truth, attendees received inconsistent information, leading to confusion and missed events. This resulted in declining attendance, increased host coordination overhead and erosion of trust between organizers and participants.
Problem Statement
Despite NYC’s vibrant photowalk culture, photographers face unnecessary friction joining events due to scheduling and communication living across disconnected platforms.
Design Goals
Scheduling
Plan smarter with organized dates, RSVPs and instant calendar integration
Communication
Streamline communication between hosts and attendees effortlessly
Design decision 01
Unify event discovery into a single source of truth
Photographers were losing momentum before they ever RSVP’d. Events lived across Instagram, WhatsApp, generic meetup tools, and word of mouth, forcing users to piece together dates, locations and host credibility. This delayed discovery, increasing cognitive load and reduced follow through.
Centralizing NYC photowalks into a single structured discovery feed reduced ambiguity and shortened decision time, rebuilding confidence to commit. Existing platforms like Meetup, Luma, and Instagram optimized for broad events, not niche recurring photowalk communities. This revealed a clear opportunity to design for trust, clarity and repeat engagement.
Clear discovery, Trusted participation
Key insight
“If I have to DM someone just to confirm the details, I usually don’t go.” - Luis Yunda
Design decision 02
Make scheduling commitments explicit and low friction
Users were interested in attending photowalks, but unclear timing, weak reminders and ambiguous attendance norms led to tentative “I’ll see” behavior and last minute drop offs. By designing scheduling that was clear yet flexible, I reduced friction, rebuilt trust and increased confident RSVPs.
Decision signals consistently pointed to uncertainty as the primary blocker around date clarity, overlapping events, forgetfulness and who would actually show up. Making schedules explicit, integrating calendars and surfacing attendance signals directly addressed these concerns and shifted behavior from hesitation to commitment.
Designing explicit scheduling signals
Key insight
Commitment increases when expectations are explicit and reminders are built in.
Design decision 03
Streamline communication between hosts and attendees effortlessly
Communication wasn’t broken, it was misplaced. Critical updates were buried in noisy chats, causing missed information and weak group cohesion. I structured communication around the event lifecycle to surface the right message at the right moment: before, during and after the photowalk.
Signals consistently showed that users think in event phases, not individual message threads and struggled to retrieve essential details when they mattered most. Aligning communication to these phases improved clarity, confidence and participation without increasing noise.
Contextual communication
Key insight
Users don’t want more messages… they want timely, relevant ones.
Retrospective
Phase based communication reduced day of friction
The final solution unified inspiration, scheduling, and communication into a single coherent experience, transforming photowalk participation from a fragmented effort into a seamless social ritual. By reducing coordination friction, the product strengthened community trust, increased attendance and supported creators in growing sustainable photowalk communities across NYC.
"The product replaced ambiguity with clear signals. I could finally predict turnout and plan with confidence."
