Redwood is a UK-based platform designed for the LGBTQIA+ community, helping people find flatmates in a safe, inclusive environment, without fear of judgment or discrimination; often described as SpareRoom meets Bumble BFF, with safety, identity and community at its heart.

With early traction on its core offering, Redwood saw an opportunity to grow: what if users could also find local LGBTQIA+ gatherings via the app? That meant building a geolocation-based discovery engine that could pull in relevant events based on where users were and what they were into.

Software for events is disparate and often messy - and it was an entirely new market for Redwood which they were coming into cold.

• Expanding into a new use case: Redwood wanted to go beyond flatmates and offer an event discovery experience, directly embedded in its app.
• No in-house dev team: The client had a strong commercial and UX vision but lacked the internal technical capacity to bring it to life.
• Fragmented event data: LGBTQ+ event listings were scattered across platforms inconsistent APIs, broken docs, and missing metadata.
• Speed to demo: Redwood needed a working proof of concept to show investors and partners in under three weeks.

Turned complex APIs into a smooth, real-time event discovery experience—tailored, intuitive, and ready to scale.
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• Built a Two-Phase Prototype:
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  • Phase 1: Integrated event platform’s API into a custom-built UI.‍
  • Phase 2: Layered in unique, personalised filtering capabilities, rendering real-time updates.
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• Got Hands-On with Messy APIs:
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  • Navigated deprecated endpoints and sparse documentation to pull relevant event data.
  • Worked directly with event platform’s developers to access early-stage tagging systems.
  • Evaluated (and hacked around) multiple other API providers to explore expanded offerings.
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• Delivered Fully Documented Code:
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  • Simple but functional frontend.
  • Full README and developer notes for handover.
  • Lightweight UI, clear architecture, and minimal setup requirements.