Origin Story

HELLO! Welcome to our Origin Story :)

UX Wizards was formed in 2018 as an in-person MeetUp Group based in Sunnyvale, California, then known as "UX Wizards of the South Bay".

In the group's early months, we would meet in the lobby of the Santa Clara Hyatt where we would sit in the square formation of their couches and talk as one big group. When we outgrew our original space, we started finding larger venues like TAP’T in Sunnyvale that allowed for more mingling.

Although we enjoy the in-person aspect of our community, we had always planned on doing more virtual events. Then in 2020 when the pandemic hit, we had to finally flip the switch to go completely online. We soon found ourselves with Wizards all over the world, which means we were no longer just wizards of the South Bay. We hence became known simply as "UX Wizards".

We now host a bunch of events! We’ve hosted over 250 in-person and virtual ‘live’ events, which include co-working sessions, book clubs, mixers, portfolio reviews, design jams, and speaking events. All of these were run by our amazing volunteers!

Who is Gandalf?

Gandalf Winterwhisk is our cheerful and made-up mascot. The last name “Winterwhisk” came from an online Wizard name generator and first drawn iterations of our mascot came from a fun little tutorial found when Googling, "How to draw a wizard"!

The wizard in the picture below is actually Merlin (from The Sword in the Stone) but helps illustrate the ‘light-hearted, mystical wizard’ persona that we’ve crafted, and refer to as ‘Gandalf.’