Protothon 2026 - the Online UX Hackathon by DubsTech and Design Buddies

The Protothon by DubsTech and Design Buddies is back.

Design at 10x speed. No code. Just design.

Think you know the design process? Now try it in a fast-paced, high-energy challenge where you’ll take an idea from problem space to polished prototype in just one event.

Work solo or with a team (of up to 5 members), explore real-world prompts across tracks like classic, mental wellbeing, food, and travel, and push your creativity under time pressure.

​🧠 How It Works

​You’ll take on a real-world UX challenge and rapidly prototype a solution—no coding required. Just bring your creativity, curiosity, and a good internet connection.

​1️⃣ Understand the ProblemPick from one of our prompt tracks: Classic, Enterprise, Travel, or Mental Well Being. Each track will challenge you with a unique, open-ended design problem.

​2️⃣ Ideate & SketchDo some user research, sketch your concepts, sort your ideas—anything goes. The goal is to explore bold ideas fast.

​3️⃣ Prototype ItUse tools like Figma, Sketch, or Webflow to build out your polished solution. Make it beautiful, make it functional!

​4️⃣ Submit & Win!Your design will be judged by top UX professionals from across the industry. Best designs win awesome prizes! 🎁

​🔥 Event Tracks

​🎯 Classic Track: Get a chance to focus on crafting a new experience. This could be a feature in an app, a redesigned website, or an entirely new platform!

​💼 Enterprise Track: Design for business! This track focuses on empowering large corporations with the tools they need for daily operations, analytics, and business intelligence.

❤️‍🩹 Mental Well Being Track: Design for mental wellbeing! This track focuses on creating thoughtful, human-centered solutions that support emotional health, daily wellness habits, self-reflection, and access to meaningful care resources.

​🏙️ Travel Track: Step into the future of travel by designing smarter, more human-centered experiences—from trip planning and navigation to accessibility, safety, and seamless exploration.

​🌟 Judges from Across the UX Galaxy

​Get your designs reviewed by an elite panel of UX experts from companies like Google, Microsoft, Amazon, T-Mobile, and more!

• Adam Syed – Founder, Skywalker• Aditi Gupta – UX Designer, Microsoft• Afsal Basith – Product Designer, TPConnects• Alice Li – Product Designer II, Health Stream• Amol Sood – Director, User Experience, Oracle• Augustina Liu – Senior Product Designer, Toast• Darshil Vora – Product Design, Salesforce• EJ Lim – User Experience Interaction Designer, Google• Evan Luputra – Senior UX Designer, Expedia Group• Haopeng Liu – UX Designer, Microsoft• Jatin Gupta – Senior Product Designer, T-Mobile• Jay Hari – Product Design, Meta• Kruti Mehta – Design Director, Additive Agency• Lingshuang Kong – Product Designer, TikTok• Mookesh Patel – Professor Emeritus, Arizona State University• Nagesh Sawant – Principal Engineer, T-Mobile• Nuoran Chen – Product Designer, The New York Times• Olumide Durotoluwa – Senior Product Manager, M-KOPA• Pragya Srivastava – CEO and Principal UX Designer, Ctrl+Design• Pratik Joglekar – Senior Product Designer, HubSpot• Purvi Joshi – Manager, Software, AWS• Rishabh Aggarwal – Member of Technical Staff Frontend, OpenAI• Rohan Pal – Technical Program Manager, Abnormal AI• Sayed Abdelaal – UX Design Lead, Atos• Sheraz Butt – Product Designer, Piktochart• Shiva Sah – Senior Product Designer, Cisco• Simran Tank – Product Designer Senior Associate, JP Morgan Chase• Sonia Song – Interaction Designer, Google• Stan Khoruzhenko – Senior Staff Product Designer, AngelList• Stefanie McLaren – Senior Product Designer, Grammarly• Yuchuan Yu – UX Designer, Microsoft• Yumei Feng – Product Designer, Orby.ai• Zubin Chopra – Senior Software Engineer, LinkedIn

​👾 Organized by DubsTech x Design Buddies

​About DubsTech

​DubsTech is a student club at the University of Washington Information School (@uwischool ) focused on accelerating people’s careers in tech. We host free workshops, talks, and hackathons on data science, UX design, software engineering, and cyber security.

​Follow us on:Instagram | Discord | YouTube | Facebook

​About Design Buddies

​@design.buddies is a community where you level up your design career. Make lifelong friends, improve your design craft, and land jobs. We have free resources, events, design challenges, a job board, fun perks, and more. Hop in here: https://discord.com/invite/designbuddies

​Have questions? 📬

​Reach out at dubstech@uw.edu Or check out our FAQ