Run it Back

Every professional has experienced it: you have genuine, energizing conversations at a conference, exchange contact info, and then... nothing. Life resumes, inboxes fill up, and the connection fades before it ever had a chance to become something real. Run it Back started as a personal frustration and became a structured design exploration into why post-conference follow-through is so hard and what a product built specifically around it might look like.

Company
Side Project, 2022
Role
Solo Designer & Researcher
Duration
3 months (evenings/weekends)
Team
Solo project

The challenge

The gap between meeting someone and actually knowing them

LinkedIn exists. Email exists. CRMs exist. So why do so many valuable professional relationships die within two weeks of a conference? The answer, I suspected, wasn't a lack of tools — it was that existing tools weren't designed for the specific social context and emotional momentum of a post-conference relationship.

I wanted to explore whether a purpose-built tool for this specific transition — from 'interesting person I just met' to 'ongoing professional relationship' — could meaningfully change outcomes. And I wanted to do it as a rigorous design process, not just a UI exercise.

How I approached it

1

Problem Definition

Validating that the problem was real and worth solving

  • Conducted 22 interviews with professionals across design, product, engineering, and sales — all frequent conference attendees
  • Mapped existing tools used for post-conference follow-up (LinkedIn, personal CRMs, notes apps, email drafts) and documented their friction points
  • Ran a two-week diary study with 8 participants immediately following a major industry conference — tracking every contact attempt and its outcome
  • Identified that the core failure wasn't motivation — people wanted to follow up — it was timing, context collapse, and the absence of a clear 'next action'
2

Concept Development

Exploring the solution space before committing to a direction

  • Generated 40+ concept sketches across three distinct product directions: a social app model, a task-based follow-up tool, and a lightweight CRM with conference-specific context
  • Built a 2×2 matrix evaluating each direction on 'depth of relationship tracking' vs 'friction of use' — with interview data mapping participant preferences
  • Identified the key insight: the tool needed to work during the conference (when context is fresh) to be useful after (when context has faded)
  • Narrowed to a single direction: a mobile-first capture tool that uses in-the-moment context to generate personalized follow-up prompts at the right time
3

Design & Prototyping

Building something testable

  • Designed a complete user flow: contact capture → context tagging → intelligent follow-up scheduling → personalized message drafts
  • Built a medium-fidelity Figma prototype covering core flows for 5 key scenarios identified in research
  • Designed a 'relationship heat map' feature — a visual representation of connection recency and interaction depth that made follow-up prioritization intuitive
  • Prototyped an AI-assisted message drafting feature (pre-LLM-era, rule-based) that used captured context to suggest opening lines
4

Testing & Iteration

Validating the concept with the people it was designed for

  • Ran prototype testing with 14 participants — 7 from the original interview cohort, 7 new participants recruited for fresh perspective
  • Tested desirability alongside usability: would people actually change their behavior for this?
  • Found strong resonance with the core value proposition but significant resistance to the contact-capture step — revised to use business card photography and LinkedIn QR code scanning
  • Iterated to a final prototype validated across 3 rounds of testing

The solution

A relationship tool designed around the conference moment

Run it Back is a mobile app designed for use at and immediately after professional events. The core mechanic is a 30-second contact capture flow that happens in the moment — scan a QR code or business card, add a voice note about why this person matters, tag the context, and you're done. The app takes it from there.

In the days after a conference, Run it Back sends personalized follow-up prompts based on what you captured. Not 'follow up with John' — but 'John mentioned he's evaluating tools for his design ops workflow. Here's a draft opening message that references your conversation about AI in design.' The specificity is what makes it actionable.

A relationship heat map view gives users a visual overview of their professional network health — not as a vanity metric, but as a prioritization tool for where to invest time. Relationships approaching 'cold' get surfaced before they're gone.

What it delivered

22
Research interviews conductedGrounding the design in real behavior, not assumptions
3
Major concept pivotsEach one driven by what testing revealed, not preference
14
Prototype test participantsAcross two rounds of usability and desirability testing
87%
Desirability scoreParticipants who said they would use this if available

Reflection

Run it Back was the most enjoyable design project I've done in years — not because it was easy, but because I had the freedom to follow the research wherever it led without organizational constraints. The biggest surprise was how much the research changed my initial assumptions. I went in thinking the problem was forgetfulness; I came out knowing it was context collapse and timing. That insight completely changed the design. Side projects are where I go to remember why I love this work.

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