DoorList
Campus social life was built to exclude. I redesigned it to let people in.
Role
Lead Product Designer
Timeline
Feb 2024 – Sep 2025
Company
DoorList, campus events app
Outcome
Social discovery became the growth engine
01 / The world
In college, if you're not already in, you're kept out.
If you're in a fraternity, a club, a team, those are your people. But that's the ceiling. If you're not in a group, there is no way in. Events flow through group chats, member lists, invite-only posts. The entire system is built around groups, not individuals.
65%
of college students report feeling lonely.
Active Minds / TimelyCare, 2024
Discovery failure
“I know things are happening. I see people posting about them after. I just never knew about them in time.”
Invitation barrier
“I'd go to anything if someone asked me. Nobody asks.”
DoorList made isolation worse. More events you couldn't hear about, more events you couldn't get into.
I joined DoorList, a campus events app with 45K downloads and flat retention running at UVA. Students were already saying the app felt exclusive.
“I downloaded it once, got invited to one thing, and never opened it again. It just sits there reminding me I don't go anywhere.”
If I just improved the app, I'd make the exclusion worse. So I pushed to open it up.
How it worked
What I imagined
In real life, a friend can always get you in. DoorList couldn't.
02 / The fight
When I finally proposed my idea, the CEO shut it down.
This would change what the product was. The hosts were against it. Nobody was asking for it.
The hosts
“Hosts would hate it.”
The team
“It would compromise safety.”
The admins
“Admins won't approve.”
I was new with no leverage. I scaled it back until the CEO said yes.
It launched. A week passed. Maybe 1-2% of events went public.
I had talked this up. The feed was practically empty. Everyone was ready to move on.
So why were students tapping 12x more on a screen with nothing to find?
more taps on
search than any
other tab
All Events
Clubs
They weren't looking for events. They were looking for people.
Now I had proof. I used it to push more changes. Small iterations, each one earning the next. Every version made the product more about people and less about listings.
Early exploration
Then I gave individuals a way in without needing to be on a list.
Friend visibility on every event
Now you could see who you knew at any event. The decision changed from "do I want to go" to "my friend is going."
Social feed moved to home
The first screen stopped showing events and started showing people. Individuals became the entry point.
Feed ranked by people, not listings
I designed the ranking logic around friend activity and shared connections, not event proximity or recency.
03 / The outcome
The exclusion cycle broke.
Before
After
The best decision I have made
The app has most definitely the cleanest UI out of every app available for finding social events, and makes an amazing job at curating them.
Thy_OpenField
Great App
Really easy to link up with friends and find events around you.
Student
Fantastic App
Makes it easy to find and create groups. Each update has addressed every concern I had with it.
Student
Great app for events
DoorList is a great way to know what events are happening around campus and has made it easy to stay connected.
Student
Love DoorList
DoorList is super easy to navigate and is a very useful tool to see everything happening around you.
EJ14303
Easy and secure
This app allows you to host events safely and securely. Great way for students to learn about events safely.
Student
The best decision I have made
The app has most definitely the cleanest UI out of every app available for finding social events, and makes an amazing job at curating them.
Thy_OpenField
Great App
Really easy to link up with friends and find events around you.
Student
Fantastic App
Makes it easy to find and create groups. Each update has addressed every concern I had with it.
Student
Great app for events
DoorList is a great way to know what events are happening around campus and has made it easy to stay connected.
Student
Love DoorList
DoorList is super easy to navigate and is a very useful tool to see everything happening around you.
EJ14303
Easy and secure
This app allows you to host events safely and securely. Great way for students to learn about events safely.
Student
Students were joining events they were never on the list for and inviting friends who weren't even on the app yet.
Retention with 3+ friends
0.0x
7-day retention lift
0x
Growth from peer invites
Didn't exist before
Total downloads
Measured via PostHog
Within a year, other apps followed.
No campus events app surfaced friend activity in discovery before DoorList.
Partiful, 2025. Showing users where their friends are going to events they weren't invited to. The same pattern DoorList shipped first.
I fought for something nobody wanted. It failed publicly. It became the growth engine. 700K users proved the exclusion didn't have to be the norm.
