Proposed and led TEDxToronto’s move from WordPress to Webflow, designing and developing the responsive event website end to end in collaboration with its marketing team.
Project Overview
Context and purpose.
TEDxToronto needed to modernize its public event website as its programming moved online during COVID-19. I proposed replacing the existing WordPress implementation with Webflow, then led the responsive UX design and built the site in collaboration with the marketing team. The 2020–21 Uncharted programme ran as four digital events from October 2020 to March 2021, which made clear content structure, speaker discovery and adaptable publishing especially important.
Objectives
What the project needed to achieve.
Make speakers, talks, dates and participation information easier to find across devices. Establish a maintainable CMS structure for changing programme details, improve responsive readability and accessibility considerations, and connect design decisions directly to implementation rather than creating a separate design-to-development handoff.
The Complexity
The problem, constraints and competing priorities.
The site had to serve a multi-part programme whose dates, speakers, talks, tickets and supporting information changed over time. The work required balancing editorial hierarchy, responsive navigation, CMS architecture, brand expression and front-end behaviour while the organization was adapting to digital events. Original Webflow workspace readback verifies 27 pages and 10 CMS collections, including 17 speaker records, 15 FAQs, 50 partner records and 5 agenda records. These counts describe implementation scope, not audience impact.
My Role
My responsibilities, ownership and collaboration.
I led UX and responsive design, created Adobe XD wireframes, collaborated with marketing, and personally built the replacement in Webflow. The work combined UX design leadership, responsive web design and front-end implementation, using HTML, CSS and JavaScript where additional control was needed. I tested across screen sizes and browsers. Owning both design and implementation let me resolve information architecture and front-end constraints as one system instead of handing a static design to another team.
The Pivotal Decision
The options, trade-offs and reasoning behind the key choice.
Rather than continue adapting the previous WordPress implementation, I recommended rebuilding the public website in Webflow. That decision gave me a tighter connection between content modelling, interaction design and implementation. It also made it possible to resolve responsive behaviour and editorial structure while the experience was being built, rather than after design handoff.
The Outcome
What was delivered and the impact it made.
The project delivered a responsive, maintainable public event website that supported TEDxToronto’s shift to digital programming. TEDxToronto reported almost 1,900 registrants for the Fall 2020 Uncharted events. That figure describes programme scale, not a measured result of my website design. The digital events themselves were hosted on Venue, so this work is described as the public event website rather than the live-event platform.
Reflection & Next Steps
How this work shaped my product design approach.
This project reinforced a principle I still use: information architecture, content operations and implementation are inseparable parts of the product experience. Proposing the move to Webflow and owning the build let me make decisions about speaker discovery, responsive behaviour and CMS structure together, rather than treating development as a downstream handoff. In a future iteration, I would measure whether visitors can find relevant talks and event details, assess keyboard and mobile usability, and study how efficiently the team can publish programme changes.
