UX Speed Dating and “UI/UF”

For several years I led UX Speed Dating in San Francisco — inherited from a product-designer colleague from Atlassian, then carried forward. Timers, rotations, venue flow, prototype intake from paper to high-fi to board games — peer design engines in a room.

Format: classic speed-dating rotations on a timer, but for testing designs on as many users as possible. Attendees planned iteration cycles around the monthly night. UI/UF (User Interface / User Fashion) was the playful sibling — ideation on fashionable new app interfaces. Community research is event logistics + synthesis — not just a signup form.

Today's stack for the same monthly night

Today I’d run Figma interactive prototypes and component libraries under test. Claude-class agents would synthesize session notes into themes; Cursor would help produce on-brand event kits. Generative moodboards fuel UI/UF fashion rounds.

When venue, attendee list, prototype roster, or event brand tokens change, automations fire downstream: schedules, table cards, email, and social regenerate from shared components. Peers (hosts, researchers, designers) connect to the same design engine — tokens + components + agent prompts for research nights. Timer and rotation cards on tables and an orchestrated logistics graph plus AI synthesis are continuous — rapid prototyping, Cursor/Claude synthesis, event logistics automations.