Hi {{first_name | friend}},
If you’ve ever hung out with either of us, you know we’re open books. We’ll tell you about our worst moments, our grossest habits, our biggest screw-ups.
But we’ve been keeping a secret from you.
For months now, we’ve been scheming on something new—something that made us feel excited. And it’s time to tell you about it.
We’re running a design conference!
And we absolutely want you to be there.
(Let’s be real, we also want you to tell your friends about it. To tell your boss to buy a team pass. To tell anyone and everyone, frankly. We’ve never done this before, and we have no idea how it’ll go!)
Anyway. The conference.
It’s called Throughline, it’s happening January 29-30, and it’s all about writing design’s next chapter.
You know, the one that comes after all the chaos, and the layoffs, and the AI frenzy, and all the other whiplash UX has been through lately.
We’ve been scheming and planning and booking speakers and building websites and testing (and debugging and retesting) our shopping cart for months now. And this whole time, we’ve been dying to tell you about it.
Because…basically everyone we talk to who’s working in UX, or anything adjacent to it, has been through it lately. And as a result, they’re asking lots of questions—about the future of their field, about how to still make progress in their careers, about what UX even means anymore (and sometimes even whether they still want to be part of it).
Those are great questions. But if you’re asking them alone in your head, they can be pretty hard to answer—leading to all kinds of doom loops or anxiety spirals.
Frankly, we’ve seen enough of that in design lately. So Throughline will be about something else: inspiration, energy, clarity. It’ll help you find a sense of agency in a world where so much feels out of control. And it’ll help you decide how you want to approach the next chapter of your career.
Who’ll be speaking? So glad you asked.
Oh, just some of the most thoughtful, brilliant, generous, and downright fascinating people we know, nbd. C’mon, just look at this list:
Erika Hall on what designers actually need to know about business.
Pavel Samsonov on why your process is a product—and the users are your colleagues.
Candi Williams on how to lead when times are tough.
Ron Bronson on finding meaningful ways forward in the most challenging moments.
Catt Small on leading and influencing as an IC designer.
Shawna Hein on confronting and overcoming stress and uncertainty.
Margo Stern on building a better design hiring process.
Ida Persson on building a better future for and through design.
Amy Santee on finding and telling your most confident career story.
This is just the first batch, too. We’ll be announcing so many more in the weeks to come.
And seriously, expect zero fluff. Just speakers who are ready to get real about the chaos and contradictions of this moment in UX—and help you make sense of them.
Two days. All online. Recorded so you can watch again and again. And the first 75 tickets purchased before November 10 are only $299.
We think that’s a pretty great deal, but we also know not everyone can afford a conference right now. That’s why we’re also launching a scholarship program. We’ll start taking applications for those in November.
In the meantime, we’re looking for help providing those scholarships. In other words: we’re looking for sponsors! When you sponsor our scholarship program, you also get a team pass to the conference, on top of all the logos and mentions you might expect. It’s a great deal.
We’ll offer scholarship tickets no matter what—but we’ll be able to offer more if a couple companies step up. If yours might be one of them, hit reply and tell us!
There’s so much more we could tell you about Throughline (seriously, ask our partners—we’ve talked their ears off about how excited/terrified we are). But more than anything, we want you to check out the details yourself. We can’t wait to see you there.
—Sara & Jen
Let’s write design’s next chapter.
January 29-30, 2026 • Online
Registering a team? Save up to 60% off the individual price with a team pass.