Conference registration systems often rely heavily on email confirmations and manual coordination with event organizers. For the International Breast Density Workshop (IBDW) in 2025, I designed a centralized attendee dashboard that allowed participants to manage their registration details through a self-service interface.
The goal was to simplify the registration experience while reducing the administrative workload placed on conference organizers.
Background
For the 2023 workshop, registration was handled through a basic form and email confirmation. If attendees needed to confirm their registration or locate receipts, they often had to search their inbox or contact the organizing committee directly.
This created unnecessary administrative overhead and frustration for attendees who simply wanted to verify their information.
For the 2025 conference, payments had to be processed through a third-party platform. While the system handled transactions reliably, its form interface was rigid and difficult to customize. The registration process also could not easily support more complex scenarios such as guest tickets, networking events, or presenter roles.
As a result, the most important step of the attendee experience was taking place in an interface that felt disconnected from the rest of the conference website.
Challenge
The design focused on reducing friction for both attendees and organizers.
Attendees needed a way to quickly confirm their registration status, view purchased events, and update personal information. At the same time, organizers needed to minimize the number of support requests related to registration details.
Because the third-party payment platform could not be customized extensively, the solution needed to minimize how often attendees interacted with it while keeping the primary conference experience within the IBDW website.
Process
The solution was to create an attendee account system that served as the central hub for managing registration information.
Instead of relying on the payment platform as the main interface, the dashboard became the place where attendees could confirm their registration status, view purchased networking events, manage guest tickets, and update their personal details.
A preview of the attendee’s conference badge was included within the dashboard so that participants could see how their name, title, and affiliation would appear during the event. This allowed users to adjust how they would be represented before arriving at the conference.
The system also supported more complex scenarios such as guest registrations and presenter participation. Invited speakers and poster presenters could view their presentation titles, schedules, and poster numbers directly within their account.
Final Product
The final dashboard provided attendees with a single location where all information related to their conference participation could be accessed and managed.
Rather than relying on email confirmations or direct communication with organizers, participants could confirm their registration status, review their purchases, and update their information independently.
By keeping these interactions within the conference website, the experience also remained visually consistent with the rest of the event’s branding and design system.
Impact & Insights
The attendee dashboard significantly reduced the need for direct administrative support during the registration process.
Participants were able to confirm their registration status, review their purchases, and manage their information without relying on email confirmations or contacting the planning committee.
This project reinforced a principle that often applies to event systems as well as digital products:
Providing users with clear access to their own information reduces friction for everyone involved.
When participants can manage their own details confidently, organizers are able to focus on higher-level planning rather than routine support requests.
