Progressive Web AMPs

You’ve heard about Progressive Web Apps. You heard about AMP. One gives you unmatched engagement, but the other gives you almost that almost-instant feel. What if I told you you don’t have to compromise? Can we turn an AMP into a PWA? Can we use AMP as a data source for PWAs? And can we turn our AMPs into a progressively enhanced monster? The answer, in all cases, is probably probably. Let’s explore!

The World Is Your Interface

Just because you've closed Adobe CS and shut down your computer doesn't mean you're done designing. When you stop working on a product with user needs to consider, it doesn't mean you have stopped interacting with users. Design principles are implicit in every facet of life, from conversations with people to navigating a city to helping a loved one get through a difficult time. This talk will examine how traits such as empathy, usability, structure, aesthetics, and intuition cross over between design and the rest of life, and how going through painful, uncomfortable and scary experiences can turn you into a better designer.

How the tech sector could move in One Direction

Sacha will take us on a whirlwind tour of boybands, conspiracy theories, fake identities, appalling statistical method, and what it might teach us about the future of our industry.

Unseen

What you don’t know can’t hurt you, at least that’s the old saying. But on the web, it is precisely the things that you don’t know and can’t see that can cause the biggest headaches. The web is an unstable and unpredictable environment and every day there are complications that go unnoticed and unseen—but not by the people trying to use your site. Building a stable, usable experience online means anticipating these issues as much as possible, making some of the more commonly overlooked components of development more visible in the process.

Let Us Now Praise Ordinary People

Everywhere you turn, companies are promising to change the world. But when the people already on top promise to change the world, you have to wonder how and for whom. The how isn't usually in your benefit, and the for whom isn't usually for you. The world is working exactly as they've designed it to work. So if we really want to change it, we need to change not just how we design it, but who is designing it.

Writing Less Damned Code

Concatenating, minifying, compressing, caching: all serviceable ways to improve the performance of web interfaces. But none are as effective as not coding something in the first place. Code that don't exist is infinitely performant and extremely easy to maintain and document. This talk will identify some examples of front-end code that are either not needed at all, make the interface worse just by being there, or can be replaced by something much, much simpler. Say hello to unprogressive non-enhancement.

Everyday Matters – The Art of the Illustrated Journal

When was the last time you drew every day? In art school? In high school? In pre-school? What if you could get back into that habit, filling sketchbooks with ideas and observations, expressing yourself, stifling your inner critic, having fun, making stuff?

Danny Gregory will inspire you with his own story of creative discovery — how he began drawing again in his mid thirties, keeping an illustrated journal of his day-to-day life, and how this practice opened him up to all sorts of new experiences and discoveries. His example, his books and his website have inspired many thousands of people around the world to rediscover their own creative spark. His first illustrated memoir “Everyday Matters” lent its name to a movement that now includes professional and amateur artists around the world who document and share their lives through drawing and writing.