The Adrienne Arsht center is a premier venue shaping the performing arts scene in the heart of South Florida. Their Community Outreach and Engagement team provides educational opportunities and community events that enrich the lives of over 100,000 people. Despite strong interest in free performances and community programming, the team faced a persistent gap between RSVPs and actual attendance. In some cases, over 3,000 people would RSVP for a free event, while only a fraction ultimately attended. At the same time, the organization sought better ways to understand and sustain long-term engagement particularly with students and community members.

How might we leverage the strengths of the Adrienne Arsht Center to effectively communicate the value of free events, build excitement, and incentivize engagement before, during, and after events?

Solution‍

1. Enhancements on the Arsht Center’s current website to highlight free community events
2. Arsht Rewards: A customer loyalty & incentive platform increasing free event attendance & value by engaging Arsht Center members

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My role beyond individual contribution

As the lead product designer on this project, I was responsible for both design quality and team execution. Throughout the project I communicated progress, tradeoffs, and rationale to key stakeholders. A few of my direct responsibilities included:

• Defining and owning the end‑to‑end design strategy for the Arsht Rewards experience
• Translating research insights into clear product direction and actionable design principles
• Reviewing and refining design work produced by other designers to ensure consistency and alignment
• Leading weekly stand-ups and collaborative workshops between the design, research, and development teams for cross-functional alignment on progress checks, synthesis, and ideation
• Partnering closely with the Project Manager to keep the team on schedule using Monday.com for task tracking, dependencies, and milestones

The team worked with the Director of Community Outreach and Engagement directly early on. Conversations clarified the Arsht Center’s motives, existing technical ecosystem, and expectations for product delivery. It ultimately led to a more defined design problem statement and project scope. Our team also met with other key stakeholders (marketing, development, event leads, etc.) to align on goals, risks, and technical realities.

Benchmarking

Before committing to any design direction, this phase approached strategy-setting first instead of a competitive audit. Our key questions focused on three core areas that would ultimately shape the product strategy for long-term viability.

Cross-Functional Operating Model

I led the implementation of an effective work system early to support cross-functional execution and reduce coordination overhead as the project scaled.

• ‍Operational Structure & Tracking - Monday.com was used as the central source of truth for task ownership, dependencies, and milestones. Providing visibility across design, research, and development kept progress on schedule.‍
• Communication & Alignment - Clear communication pathways and stakeholder outreach plans were defined upfront to ensure timely feedback and avoid misalignment. This structure enabled fast decision-making without introducing unnecessary process.‍
• Meeting Design & Cadence - Meetings were intentionally structured with clear agendas and pre-work to maximize impact. Discipline-specific standups for design, research, and development allowed teams to move efficiently in parallel, while full-team sessions were reserved for synthesis, alignment, and forward progress rather than status updates.

The research mission was driven by 3 main goals:

1. Identify the reasons behind the high number of RSVPs but low turnout at free performances and events
2. Understand the perceived value of these free events among different sections of the community
3. Develop strategies that can enhance attendance rates and foster a sense of community engagement and appreciation for these events

To ground the work in real-world context and understand the Arsht Center’s target audience, research began within the first weeks. The first step: a site visit! Observing the venue and mapping the RSVP-to-attendance journey helped surface early assumptions around user motivation, friction points, and missed opportunities for engagement.

A mixed-methods approach informed the design strategy. This included contextual inquiry, surveys, interviews, and secondary research. However, the team had to overcome the limitation of conducting these through a general population rather than the Arsht Center’s current client base. By analyzing the emerging patterns, we captured both qualitative sentiment and behavioral signals.

Insights & Ideation

Desire for Valuable Incentives - Users highlight a clear preference for incentives and rewards that provide a compelling reason for them to return to the Arsht Center for future free events.

User Friendly RSVP Process - Enhancing the RSVP process with an abundance of visual content alongside textual information can encourage attendance at events.

Effective Event Reminders - Users are more likely to attend Arsht Center events if they are aware and reminded of them.

These challenges framed the need for a loyalty experience that motivates attendance, communicates value, and supports long-term engagement without adding friction. A lot of sticky notes, research analyses, and collaborative ideation later our team aligned on two proposals for the Arsht center’s team! The two viable product directions were:

1. Enhancements on the Arsht Center’s current website to highlight free community events.
2. Arsht Rewards: A customer loyalty & incentive platform increasing free event attendance & value by engaging Arsht Center members.

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Market Research

Looking at how other performing arts centers' websites showcased promote free events and make their websites easy to use highlighted opportunities for change. To set a precedent for Arsht Rewards, we reviewed existing sites that offers members-only exclusive discounts and promotion, while having a user-friendly web and mobile interface for their users.

Website Enhancements

Website improvement is recommended to improve user experience within the site and improve awareness of the free events.

Key enhancements focused on:

• Improving the visibility of free community events across the site
• Introducing richer visual context (imagery, event previews, and highlights) to set expectations and generate excitement
• Clarifying why events were valuable, even when no ticket cost was associated
• Reducing friction between discovery and RSVP by aligning content, layout, and calls to action

Arsht Rewards

A Loyalty Program - The Arsht rewards web experience is designed to promote connectivity and excitement for members to look forward to attend events hosted by the Arsht Center

Understanding the Arsht Center’s current website and backend systems functionality in practice helped determine where existing workflows could be extended. Arsht Rewards was designed to measurably influence attendance behavior, engagement, and long-term retention.

Platform Goals

• Design a clear and motivating rewards system that encourages repeat engagement
• Make progress, rewards, and benefits easy to understand immediately
• Ensure the experience is accessible, scalable, and aligned with the Arsht brand
• Deliver developer‑ready designs despite limited access to final internal data and systems

How points are earned

Points and rewards are designed to holistically incentivize engagement. During stakeholder conversations, the community team highlighted a key desire to continuously increase free event attendance & awareness through grassroots marketing efforts.

Leaning on loyalty program principles, interest is maintained during and after the event through point redemption and user journey. This foundation for data-informed decision-making around free events, incentives, and programming strategy set the tone for the Arsht Rewards design moving forward.

Arsht Rewards - Design Evolution

Design evolved through iterative exploration and feasibility validation. The initial preliminary design focused on establishing the core experience and navigation. Mid-fidelity wireframes were pitched to stakeholders to validate structure, hierarchy, and interaction patterns before investing in visual refinement.

Following concept validation, the interface was refined to align with the Arsht Center’s visual identity while maintaining clarity and accessibility. The initial childlike visual style did not match the vision of the client. A lightweight style guide was established to ensure consistency across components and future scalability.

User Flows

The journey ensures users can navigate to Arsht rewards from multiple different touch points. A user’s ability to join from the main Arsht center site, post event RSVP or attendance is intentionally easy as each flow was designed to keep interactions simple. Users create an account, attend events, earn points, and redeem rewards seamlessly.

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Mobile Design

As out team refined the journey, we noticed a gap in the design for the event day flow. A mobile design was missing and would be needed for the project handoff. Since Arsht rewards was designed as a desktop/tablet first experience, it assumed that users would only utilize it before and after the event. To the mobile design had to accommodate low refresh rates and a clearly defined ticket scan flow for real-time point accrual.

‍Development

To support scalability and operational efficiency, the product was designed around a CMS-driven architecture that leverages the Arsht Center’s existing CRM ticketing platform. A template was created to feed off existing CMS data so the website manager only inputs text and photos. This integration-first approach ensured the solution remained realistic, maintainable, and aligned with existing systems.

CRM Platform Integration consideration included:

• Integrate the rewards sign up page when users rsvp to an event
• Allow users to access their “rewards” dashboard/page to viewpoints and rewards by clicking on the designed tab from profile page
• Unless unavailable, using the client CRM API to connect with a third-party rewards system provider to map/keep track of points

Arsht Rewards concluded with a developer-ready, scalable loyalty platform designed to influence attendance behavior, increase repeat engagement, and give the Arsht Center visibility into long-term community participation. The final solution delivers a cohesive, developer-ready loyalty platform that balances user motivation, brand alignment, and technical feasibility. Direct Arsht Center benefits include:

• Increased customer loyalty and retention
• Stronger Community Building
• Competitive differentiation & advantage from other cultural institutions
• Increased sales and revenue
• Organic word-of-mouth promotion

Design Decisions, Limitations & Tradeoffs

The desktop design direction and mobile design shift required several technical assumptions, including the availability of ticket scanners at free events and the ability to track real-time attendance. Along the way the following key design decisions significantly impacted the final product.

• Simplified point visibility to reduce cognitive load
• Prioritized progress visualization over dense reward descriptions
• Designed modular components to support scalability

Tradeoffs Considered

The client appreciated our concept but told us that a web solution may not be the best option as over 80% of their community members buy tickets on their mobile phone. Without the direct input of the client’s marketing and internal development teams we had to make several assumptions regarding technical aspects. Along the way, I learned that despite consistent communication with one team, a product can only be shipped successfully with the input of secondary team input. As a design team, we had to:

• Reduce feature scope to meet timeline while preserving core value
• Defer advanced personalization in favor of a strong foundational system
• Balance brand expression with usability and accessibility requirements

If there was more time...

‍Games in the app would offer a unique backstage access perk. This experience enhances attendees' sense of VIP treatment. To further deepen engagement, future iterations could introduce playful mechanics:

• Virtual scavenger hunt
• Trivia and pre-/post-show quizzes
• Interactive “put on your own show” experiences

Community feature so attendees can connect and discuss events on a board. Creating a space for passionate event goers to share excitement and tips would foster long-term relationships and shared identity through:

• Community chat and discussion boards
• Photo galleries for event memories

This project reinforced how product design extends beyond interfaces into systems, incentives, and organizational alignment. Designing Arsht Rewards required balancing user motivation, technical feasibility, and business goals within real-world constraints. As Lead Product Designer, my focus was not only on the end experience, I learned:

• Structuring meetings intentionally and maintaining transparency created alignment across teams. Allowing designers, researchers, and developers to work in parallel while remaining aligned on priorities and decisions created an environment for focused, accountable work and a project that delivered on time.
• Making tradeoffs visible and intentional reduced friction between teams
• Final documentation was crucial to the success of ensuring the product could evolve after handoff, not stall at launch

Product Design Learnings

This project directly impacted how I view scalable system design today. Supporting longitudinal user tracking across systems can be difficult to implement but it has a huge impact on growth is done well. I also learned that in product design, business impact is just as important in shaping design strategy.

• Loyalty systems are behavioral design problems, not visual design exercises
• Small shifts in perceived value can meaningfully change user commitment
• Designing for scalability and data flow is as critical as front-end usability
• Early collaboration with developers prevents late-stage compromises
• Clear principles accelerate decision-making in complex systems
• Positioning free events as a strategic growth lever rather than a cost center increased perceived value and brand loyalty