Visual Tizita
An AWS-native event companion for sharing, preserving, and reliving memories
- My Role
- Founder, product designer, full stack engineer, and AWS architect
- Platform
- Responsive web application and event companion, with guest access through shared links and QR codes
Quick Overview
Production event platform with no-account guest uploads, private galleries, moderation, downloads, slideshow, guestbook, analytics, cover artwork, QR sharing, and host operations.
- Who it serves
- Event hosts who need one place to manage event memories and guests who want to contribute, browse, react to, and download media without creating an account
- Current status
- Production
The Problem
Event memories are usually split across phones, group chats, social platforms, and cloud folders. Hosts have little control, guests face signup friction, and meaningful photos become difficult to collect after the event.
The platform also needed to work during a real event: fast mobile entry, private access, moderation, live display, downloads, engagement, and operational tools without forcing every guest to install an app.
The Solution
Visual Tizita gives each event a private companion page reached through a QR code or shared link. Guests can upload photos and videos without accounts, browse the gallery, leave guestbook messages, react, view a slideshow, and download memories.
Hosts use a separate authenticated dashboard to create and manage events, moderate uploads, control cover artwork, review analytics, generate QR codes, manage media, and preserve completed events through archive workflows.
The platform has also supported a real NACLASSU 2026 Event Companion deployment, proving that the shared foundation can support event-specific public experiences and operational workspaces.
My Contribution
Product and brand
Led the rebrand from DegisSnap to Visual Tizita and defined the host, guest, event-companion, and monetization direction.
Frontend engineering
Built the React and Vite experiences for anonymous guest access, gallery, downloads, slideshow, guestbook, event creation, and host operations.
AWS architecture
Designed the Amplify Gen 2 backend using Cognito, AppSync, DynamoDB, S3, and Lambda, with SES and SNS integrations added for operational communication.
Security and privacy
Separated host authentication from guest access, enforced ownership boundaries, protected private event data, and designed moderation and abuse-control paths.
Deployment and operations
Established us-west-2 as the canonical AWS region, isolated staging from production, and managed guarded production promotion and rollback branches.
Quality engineering
Expanded automated coverage through the NACLASSU milestone, where the full repository reached 974 passing tests across 72 files.
Key Features
QR based guest access
Guests scan a code or open a link to reach the event gallery immediately, with no signup.
Guest uploads without accounts
Anyone with the link can add photos to the shared gallery.
Private event galleries
Each event gets its own gallery, scoped so only people with the link can see it.
Host authentication and dashboard
Hosts sign in with Cognito to manage their events, media, and settings.
Moderation
Hosts can review and remove uploads that should not stay in the gallery.
Live slideshow
Photos can be displayed as a running slideshow, useful for screens at the event itself.
Guestbook, loves, and comments
Guests can leave messages and react to photos, giving the gallery a social layer.
Event analytics
Hosts can see engagement across their event from the dashboard.
Event cover management
Hosts choose and update the cover photo representing the event.
Photo and video downloads
Guests can save event media, with download flows designed for original and optimized formats.
Event archives
A Lambda-backed archive workflow packages completed event media for long-term preservation.
Event Companion deployments
The shared platform can power branded event experiences such as the NACLASSU 2026 companion.
Technology
Frontend
AWS
API
Architecture
Visual Tizita Architecture
Guest or Host
Reaches the app through a link or QR code
React Application
React + Vite frontend, shared by guests and hosts
AWS Amplify · Build, Host, Deploy
Amazon Cognito
Host authentication
AWS AppSync
GraphQL API + authorization
Amazon DynamoDB
Events, guestbook, comments, loves
Amazon S3
Uploaded photos, event covers
Amplify builds and deploys the frontend and AWS backend together, including the production environment running in Oregon (us-west-2).
Client
React + Vite
Guest and host experiences share one frontend, with routes and permissions split by role.
Authentication
Amazon Cognito
Handles host sign in, identity, and session management. Guest access does not require an account.
API
AWS AppSync
GraphQL API in front of the application data, enforcing ownership rules between hosts, events, and guest uploads.
Data
Amazon DynamoDB
Stores events, guest metadata, guestbook entries, comments, and love reactions.
Media
Amazon S3
Stores uploaded photos and event cover images.
Workflows
AWS Lambda
Runs backend workflows such as event archive generation and operational access paths.
Deployment
AWS Amplify
Builds, hosts, and deploys the application, including the production environment in Oregon (us-west-2).
Guests enter through scoped event links and unauthenticated AWS access, while hosts authenticate through Cognito. AppSync and ownership rules separate host-managed records from guest interactions, DynamoDB stores application state, S3 stores media, and Lambda handles workflows such as archives. Amplify builds and deploys the stack in the canonical us-west-2 environment, with staging kept isolated from production.
Product Gallery
These are AI generated concept UI images, not screenshots captured from the live production application. They illustrate the product direction alongside the real production evidence above.
Engineering Challenges
Letting guests contribute without an account
Guest uploads had to work without authentication while still being scoped to the right event and protected from abuse. That meant designing authorization rules in AppSync that trust a shared event link rather than a signed in identity, while keeping host owned data locked down.
Keeping host data properly scoped
With Cognito identities and AppSync resolvers, every read and write needed an ownership check so one host could never see or modify another host's event, guests, or media.
Running a real production environment
Moving from a working build to a deployed AWS application meant dealing with real environment management: setting up the production region in Oregon, retiring earlier environments safely, and keeping Amplify deployments predictable.
Growing one product into an event platform
The system evolved from photo sharing into a reusable event companion with branded experiences and operational workspaces. That required keeping shared platform capabilities separate from event-specific data and permissions.
Results and Evidence
- Deployed and running in production on AWS in us-west-2 (Oregon).
- Delivered and verified a NACLASSU 2026 Event Companion milestone on phone and desktop.
- The NACLASSU milestone branch reached 974 passing tests across 72 files.
- Staging and production environments are isolated, with guarded production promotion and rollback paths.
What I Learned
Building the guest side taught me how much authorization design changes when half your users never log in. I had to think about permissions in terms of what a link can do, not just what a signed in user can do.
Running a real Amplify production deployment, including retiring an older region, gave me a much better sense of what operating an AWS application actually involves beyond just building the features.
Supporting a real event showed me that privacy, moderation, download reliability, event-day speed, and rollback readiness matter as much as the visible gallery experience.
Related Credentials
AWS re/Start Graduate
Amazon Web Services
Issued Jul 24, 2026
AWS Skills Center Cloud Practitioner Foundations
Amazon Web Services
Issued Jun 12, 2026
Introduction to Cybersecurity
Cisco
Issued Apr 3, 2026
See every credential on the Credentials and Learning page.