Designing Community with New Balance

New Balance x The Whitaker Group: Designing Community

When The Whitaker Group teamed up with New Balance for their Building Better, Together campaign, they set out to highlight the people shaping culture in their cities. For the shoe launch, they gathered a group of Charlotte-based creatives (e.g. DJs, designers, photographers, and entrepreneurs) to model the collection and later lead community workshops inspired by their individual crafts.

I was invited to represent the UX and tech side of the community. Instead of approach UX design in a generic way, I decided to show the BTS for how I apply design thinking to something unexpected: event marketing.

During the workshop, I walked guests through how I design the user journey behind A 704 Party. From the moment someone discovers the brand on social media to the point they buy a ticket and show up. I broke down how UX principles like conversion funnels, trust building, and iterative testing translate into the real world. Optimizing RSVP flows, building text-invite pipelines, and studying engagement data to improve each event’s turnout.

User Journey Map

My goal wasn’t just to talk about UX, but instead show how design thinking spans across various industries.