Workday Rising Attendee Portal
Designing and evolving a digital attendee experience across multiple years of Workday Rising
Workday Rising is an annual global event bringing together tens of thousands of attendees across North America and EMEA. With hundreds of sessions, livestreams, and activities happening throughout the event, the attendee portal gives people a central place to explore the program, plan their schedules, and access live content.
Since 2023, I've been responsible for the portal's UX/UI design, building on the existing platform while introducing new features and improving the experience each year. I've worked closely with project managers, developers, and client stakeholders to balance attendee needs, evolving requirements, and technical constraints across pre-event, live, and post-event experiences.
What I owned
As the digital experience design lead, I was responsible for the portal's UX/UI design across the attendee journey, from early planning through the live event and post-event experience.
- Leading UX/UI design for new features and improvements across the portal.
- Defined user flows, interaction patterns, and visual hierarchy across key attendee experiences.
- Worked with stakeholders to clarify requirements, priorities, and technical constraints.
- Developed reusable UI patterns and components to support consistency across features and event years.
- Collaborated with developers, PMs, and client teams to refine designs, address edge cases, and support implementation.
The environment
Each event came with fixed launch dates, changing requirements, and a platform that needed to support both in-person and digital attendees. Features were introduced at different stages of the event, with limited opportunities to make changes once everything was live.
The existing platform and third-party integrations also shaped what was possible. I worked closely with engineering to understand those limitations early, adjust designs where needed, and prioritize solutions that could be built and tested within the event timeline.
Key Experience Upgrades
Broadcast Channel Evolution
From Homepage Takeover to Dedicated Broadcast Experience
Originally, the live broadcast appeared by replacing the homepage hero with a video player. As the event expanded to include simultaneous livestreams, segments, and breakout sessions, attendees needed a clearer way to see what was airing, what was coming next, and how to navigate the program.
Initial Experience (2023-2024)
We moved the broadcast experience to its own page, where I designed the UI and interactions for both pre-event planning and live viewing.
For the pre-event experience, I created a time-based schedule that let attendees preview upcoming broadcasts and save sessions to their agenda. The tabbed layout was an improvement over the previous year's anchored links, giving attendees a more straightforward way to browse the schedule.
I also reused existing session card components for favoriting and agenda-building. While there were limitations to what we could customize, this allowed us to maintain consistent behavior without introducing unnecessary development complexity.
Several early concepts weren’t technically viable given how the platform handled live data. I partnered with engineering to validate feasibility, refine the direction, and land on patterns that would stay reliable at peak traffic.
Live Broadcast
During the event, the Broadcast page brought the video player and real-time schedule together, showing attendees what was live, what had ended, and what was coming next.
Since the tabbed navigation wasn't technically feasible for the live page, I designed quick-access modals for viewing the previous and following days. This replaced the need to leave the broadcast page to check another day's schedule.
I also created wireflows to document screen states, navigation, and transitions, giving developers a clearer reference for implementation.
Evolution in 2025
As the session catalog improved, we retired the separate pre-event broadcast schedule and kept the live broadcast experience on a single page. I continued refining the page's UI and interactions, maintaining the day-to-day schedule modals while updating the visual design to align with the latest brand and platform changes.
The result was a more consistent broadcast experience that could accommodate changing schedules and live programming without redesigning the entire interface each year.
The broadcast page kept its familiar structure—player + schedule—while gaining improvements that clarified navigation and real-time state changes as programming continued to grow.
System over one-offs
Building a more consistent UI
Before I joined the project, much of the portal had been designed around individual pages and immediate needs, resulting in inconsistencies that became harder to manage as new features were added.
I started bringing more consistency to the UI through reusable layouts, components, and interaction patterns that could be applied across different content types and event phases.
Reusable patterns and components helped make feature development faster and more predictable, reducing the need to design and build each new feature from scratch.
Session Catalog
As the event program grew, the session catalog needed to communicate more information across different attendee types, access levels, and session formats. I worked with client stakeholders to improve how this information appeared throughout the catalog, introducing color-coded labels for tracks, access levels, and livestream availability.
I also designed UI prompts to help free attendees identify premium sessions they could access, making the different options easier to understand while browsing and building their schedules.
Personalization enhancements
As new personalization features were introduced, I designed the supporting UI and interaction patterns to fit within the existing portal.
I worked with developers and third-party vendors to understand integration requirements and technical limitations, making adjustments where needed while keeping the experience consistent with the rest of the platform.
Registration Interface redesign
I redesigned the registration landing page to better align with Workday's updated branding and the rest of the attendee portal. The updated layout introduced clearer visual hierarchy and organization, making it easier for attendees to review and compare registration packages.
The updated layout made registration options easier to review and compare, while bringing the page in line with Workday's updated branding.
Impact
Over several years, the attendee portal has grown into a more consistent and flexible experience, supporting new features, changing event requirements, and Workday's evolving brand. By building on existing patterns and working closely with engineering, we've been able to continue improving the portal each year while maintaining a familiar experience for returning attendees.