Climate Week NYC

At a glance

Sector: events, sustainability and conferences.

Platforms: iOS and Android.

What we did: product design and mobile app development for the official Climate Week NYC app, the guide to over 500 events across ten programme themes during the largest climate summit in the world, together with a directory of sustainable businesses across New York City.

Redesign: the summit had been running on an off-the-shelf white-label events app that attendees barely used. We replaced it with a purpose-built product, and added a city-wide sustainable business directory that the previous app did not have.

The challenge

Climate Week NYC already had an app. It was an off-the-shelf white-label events platform, the kind licensed and reskinned for hundreds of different events a year, and attendees barely used it.

The reason was structural rather than cosmetic. Climate Week NYC is not one conference in one hall. It runs over 500 events across ten programme themes, spread over dozens of venues around New York City, alongside a parallel programme of digital events open to people anywhere in the world. A generic platform is built around a single flat schedule with a filter or two bolted on. Ask it to carry ten themes, a city’s worth of venues and a global digital track at the same time and the structure of the week disappears into a list. Someone has to get from “what is on” to “what is on for me” in well under a minute. When that takes longer, people stop opening the app and fall back on the printed programme.

So the design problem was not to add features to the old app. It was to make the shape of the programme legible: ten themes, seven days, in-person and digital, several hundred sessions, on a phone screen. Timing makes that harder. Most attendees install an event app on the morning the event starts, standing outside a venue, on a network shared with a few thousand other people. There is no onboarding window and no second attempt: if the first screen does not explain itself, the app is deleted before lunch.

The second problem was entirely new. Climate Week wanted a directory of sustainable businesses across New York City inside the app, and no version of it had existed there before. A directory is not a schedule. A schedule is organised by time and answered by “where do I need to be next”. A directory has no start times to order it, is answered by category and by what is close by, and has to stay useful in the gaps between sessions and after the summit has finished. Putting both in one app without either burying the other was a distinct piece of design work rather than an extra screen.

On top of both, live change is constant. Sessions move room, fill up or get cancelled while the week is running, so what is on screen has to reflect the schedule as it stands now rather than the one published weeks earlier. And a crowded venue with poor signal should not be the reason somebody cannot check where they are meant to be next.

What we designed

We designed and built one product for iOS and Android to replace the white-label platform, with a single content model behind both apps so the programme only has to be maintained once.

The programme is the centre of the app. Over 500 events are organised by the summit’s ten programme themes, so someone who cares about energy, finance or food can go straight to their part of the week instead of scrolling everything. Events can be browsed by day and narrowed by theme, and the app holds a clear distinction between in-person events in New York City and digital events anyone can join remotely. That difference matters enormously to an attendee on another continent, and it is the thing event apps most often blur.

Each event has its own detail screen covering what it is, when and where it runs and who is involved, with a route straight through to registration. Registering inside the app removes the most common point of drop-off: finding an interesting session, meaning to sign up later on a laptop, and never doing it.

Alongside the programme sits the sustainable business directory. This was new scope rather than a redesigned feature: nothing like it existed in the previous app. Restaurants, shops and services across New York City that put the environment near the top of their priorities are listed so attendees can find what is near them, between sessions and after hours. Because it is browsed by category and by what is nearby rather than by time, it is built as its own space in the app instead of another view of the schedule. It gives the app a reason to exist beyond the seven days of the summit, and it turns attention during the week into money spent with businesses doing the work.

Results

Over 1,600 app downloads in a single week, for an event whose previous app had barely been used. Alongside those, 1,200+ registrations and 1,200+ user interactions across the same seven-day period. The team met every target set for Climate Week.

The same summit, the same audience and the same week: what changed was an app people opened.

Frequently asked

How long does it take to build an event app?

For most events, plan on three to four months from a standing start to both app stores, and work backwards from the event date rather than forwards from today. The build is rarely the constraint. Content is: schedules firm up late, speaker details arrive last, and app store review adds days that cannot be compressed. The practical rule is to have the app submitted and approved several weeks before the doors open, then keep loading and correcting content right up to the morning of day one.

When is it worth replacing a white-label event app?

When the shape of your event does not fit the platform. White-label apps are built around one flat schedule, and for a single-track conference in a single building that is genuinely enough. But once an event has parallel programmes, a set of themes people navigate by, venues spread across a city, or a digital audience joining from other time zones, a generic platform flattens all of it into a list and attendees quietly stop opening it. Low usage of an existing event app is usually that, rather than a marketing problem. The test is simple: can someone get from “what is on” to “what is on for me” in under a minute, starting on the first screen? If the platform can be configured to do that, keep it and promote it properly, because adoption also depends on the event pointing at the app from badges, confirmation emails, venue signage and the stage. If it cannot, no amount of promotion will fix it, and a purpose-built app will.

Can an event app work offline?

It can, and for a multi-venue event it should. The schedule, venue details and maps should be downloaded to the device on first open and cached, so the app still answers the main question when venue Wi-Fi is saturated or a basement session room has no signal. Updates then sync whenever a connection returns. Anything that genuinely needs the network, such as registration or a live stream, should say so plainly instead of spinning.

Related services

Climate Week NYC replaced a white-label platform that attendees barely opened, so if you are weighing up the same decision, our guide to app redesign covers how to tell a structural problem from a cosmetic one. A free UX audit is the quicker way to find out where people are giving up on the app you already have. There is more on how we work as an app design agency in London, or get started and tell us about your event.