Case study · Community platform
figs.community
A members-only portal for a London supper club: booking, Stripe payments and the trust rules underneath.
Homepage — the illustrated fig does the identity work before a single line of copy is read.
The problem
It started as a Google Form. That quickly became hard work — guests had no way to manage the dinners they’d signed up to, and hosts had no way to run them.
Figs Community needed a bespoke, members‑only portal: one place to book a seat, pay for it, message the table and host your own.
What I did
I took it from requirements through to a running product: the member journey, the interface, the accounts and the payments.
Most members arrive from an Instagram link
Traffic is mobile and social, so the phone layout is the primary use case. The navigation collapses into a single warm orange panel of oversized targets, easy to hit one‑handed.
Home — one illustration, one promise, two routes in.
Navigation — seven destinations, every one a thumb‑sized target.
How it works
Every member gets a product, not a page
Signing in opens a personal account. You can see every dinner you’ve booked and paid for, read messages from the host of each one, see who else is coming and open their profiles, and keep a history of everywhere you’ve been.
My gatherings — what you’re hosting and what you’ve booked, with what you paid.
An event — seats remaining, when, and the neighbourhood. Never the door number until the day.
Host messages — a thread scoped to a single gathering.
Who’s going — the guest list, get to know the guests before you arrive.
Captured from the live application. Member names, event names, dates, messages and amounts are replaced with sample data, faces are removed, and locations are shown to neighbourhood level only.
The product talks to you when you’re not in it
Members are notified of every change by automated email — joining, paying, a host accepting a seat, and a host writing to the table.
- Welcome to Figs Community <3Figs Communityon sign-up
- You’re on the guest list!Figs Communityon payment
- You’ve got a new sign up for your dinner party!Figs Communityto the host
- You have a new message!Figs Communityhost message
- Your Figs Community Ltd receiptStripeafter checkout
Five templates, each fired by a different change in a booking.
Outcome
Over 100 events hosted, and more than £10,000 taken in payments through the Stripe integration, which issues the receipt and releases the seat the moment a payment clears. Part of each booking passes through to the host, so that figure is payment volume rather than the company’s own revenue.
What shipped: verified member accounts, a public site and a members‑only portal, bookings with payment, per‑dinner guest lists and host messaging, five automated emails, and row‑level privacy rules holding the whole thing together.
Want something like this for your business?
Tell me where things are and what is in the way. I will tell you plainly whether I can help, and how I would approach it.