Tags: ide

There are 73 days to go until Patterns Day. Do you have your ticket yet?

Perhaps you’ve been holding out for some more information on the line-up. Well, I’m more than happy to share the latest news with you—today there are three new speakers on the bill…

Emil Björklund, the technical director at the Malmö outpost of Swedish agency inUse, is a super-smart person I’ve known for many years. Last year, I saw him on stage in his home town at the Confront conference sharing some of his ideas on design systems. He blew my mind! I told him there and then that he had to come to Brighton and expand on those thoughts some more. This is going to be an unmissable big-picture talk in the style of Paul’s superb talk last year.

Speaking of superb talks from last year, Alla Kholmatova is back! Her closing talk from the first Patterns Day was so fantastic that it I just had to have her come back. Oh, and since then, her brilliant book on Design Systems came out. She’s going to have a lot to share!

The one thing that I felt was missing from the first Patterns Day was a focus on inclusive design. I’m remedying that this time. Heydon Pickering, creator of the Inclusive Components website—and the accompanying book—is speaking at Patterns Day. I’m very excited about this. Given that Heydon has a habit of casually dropping knowledge bombs like the lobotomised owl selector and the flexbox holy albatross, I can’t wait to see what he unleashes on stage in Brighton on June 28th.

Be there or be square.

Tickets for Patterns Day are still available, but you probably don’t want to leave it ‘till the last minute to get yours. Just sayin’.

The current—still incomplete—line-up comprises:

• Una Kravets,
• Amy Hupe,
• Inayaili de León Persson,
• Emil Björklund,
• Alla Kholmatova, and
• Heydon Pickering.

That isn’t even the full roster of speakers, and it’s already an unmissable event!

I very much hope you’ll join me in the beautiful Duke of York’s cinema on June 28th for a great day of design system nerdery.

When I talk about evaluating technology for front-end development, I like to draw a distinction between two categories of technology.

On the one hand, you’ve got the raw materials of the web: HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. This is what users will ultimately interact with.

On the other hand, you’ve got all the tools and technologies that help you produce the HTML, CSS, and JavaScript: pre-processors, post-processors, transpilers, bundlers, and other build tools.

Personally, I’m much more interested and excited by the materials than I am by the tools. But I think it’s right and proper that other developers are excited by the tools. A good balance of both is probably the healthiest mix.

I’m never sure what to call these two categories. Maybe the materials are the “external” technologies, because they’re what users will interact with. Whereas all the other technologies—that mosty live on a developer’s machine—are the “internal” technologies.

Another nice phrase is something I heard during Chris’s talk at An Event Apart in Seattle, when he quoted Brad, who talked about the front of the front end and the back of the front end.

I’m definitely more of a front-of-the-front-end kind of developer. I have opinions on the quality of the materials that get served up to users; the output should be accessible and performant. But I don’t particularly care about the tools that produced those materials on the back of the front end. Use whatever works for you (or whatever works for your team).

As a user-centred developer, my priority is doing what’s best for end users. That’s not to say I don’t value developer convenience. I do. But I prioritise user needs over developer needs. And in any case, those two needs don’t even come into conflict most of the time. Like I said, from a user’s point of view, it’s irrelevant what text editor or version control system you use.

Now, you could make the argument that anything that is good for developer convenience is automatically good for user experience because faster, more efficient development should result in better output. While that’s true in theory, I highly recommend Alex’s post, The “Developer Experience” Bait-and-Switch.

Where it gets interesting is when a technology that’s designed for developer convenience is made out of the very materials being delivered to users. For example, a CSS framework like Bootstrap is made of CSS. That’s different to a tool like Sass which outputs CSS. Whether or not a developer chooses to use Sass is irrelevant to the user—the final output will be CSS either way. But if a developer chooses to use a CSS framework, that decision has a direct impact on the user experience. The user must download the framework in order for the developer to get the benefit.

So whereas Sass sits at the back of the front end—where I don’t care what you use—Bootstrap sits at the front of the front end. For tools like that, I don’t think saying “use whatever works for you” is good enough. It’s got to be weighed against the cost to the user.

Historically, it’s been a similar story with JavaScript libraries. They’re written in JavaScript, and so they’re going to be executed in the browser. If a developer wanted to use jQuery to make their life easier, the user paid the price in downloading the jQuery library.

But I’ve noticed a welcome change with some of the bigger JavaScript frameworks. Whereas the initial messaging around frameworks like React touted the benefits of state management and the virtual DOM, I feel like that’s not as prevalent now. You’re much more likely to hear people—quite rightly—talk about the benefits of modularity and componentisation. If you combine that with the rise of Node—which means that JavaScript is no longer confined to the browser—then these frameworks can move from the front of the front end to the back of the front end.

We’ve certainly seen that at Clearleft. We’ve worked on multiple React projects, but in every case, the output was server-rendered. Developers get the benefit of working with a tool that helps them. Users don’t pay the price.

For me, this question of whether a framework will be used on the client side or the server side is crucial.

Let me tell you about a Clearleft project that sticks in my mind. We were working with a big international client on a product that was going to be rolled out to students and teachers in developing countries. This was right up my alley! We did plenty of research into network conditions and typical device usage. That then informed a tight performance budget. Every design decision—from web fonts to images—was informed by that performance budget. We were producing lean, mean markup, CSS, and JavaScript. But we weren’t the ones implementing the final site. That was being done by the client’s offshore software team, and they insisted on using React. “That’s okay”, I thought. “React can be used server-side so we can still output just what’s needed, right?” Alas, no. These developers did everything client side. When the final site launched, the log-in screen alone required megabytes of JavaScript just to render a form. It was, in my opinion, entirely unfit for purpose. It still pains me when I think about it.

That was a few years ago. I think that these days it has become a lot easier to make the decision to use a framework on the back of the front end. Like I said, that’s certainly been the case on recent Clearleft projects that involved React or Vue.

It surprises me, then, when I see the question of server rendering or client rendering treated almost like an implementation detail. It might be an implementation detail from a developer’s perspective, but it’s a key decision for the user experience. The performance cost of putting your entire tech stack into the browser can be enormous.

Alex Sanders from the development team at The Guardian published a post recently called Revisiting the rendering tier . In it, he describes how they’re moving to React. Now, if this were a move to client-rendered React, that would make a big impact on the user experience. The thing is, I couldn’t tell from the article whether React was going to be used in the browser or on the server. The article talks about “rendering”—which is something that browsers do—and “the DOM”—which is something that only exists in browsers.

So I asked. It turns out that this plan is very much about generating HTML and CSS on the server before sending it to the browser. Excellent!

With that question answered, I’m cool with whatever they choose to use. In this case, they’re choosing to use CSS-in-JS (although, to be pedantic, there’s no C anymore so technically it’s SS-in-JS). As long as the “JS” part is JavaScript on a server, then it makes no difference to the end user, and therefore no difference to me. Not my circus, not my monkeys. For users, the end result is the same whether styling is applied via a selector in an external stylesheet or, for example, via an inline style declaration (and in some situations, a server-rendered CSS-in-JS solution might be better for performance). And so, as a user-centred developer, this is something that I don’t need to care about.

Except…

I have misgivings. But just to be clear, these misgivings have nothing to do with users. My misgivings are entirely to do with another group of people: the people who make websites.

There’s a second-order effect. By making React—or even JavaScript in general—a requirement for styling something on a web page, the barrier to entry is raised.

At least, I think that the barrier to entry is raised. I completely acknowledge that this is a subjective judgement. In fact, the reason why a team might decide to make JavaScript a requirement for participation might well be because they believe it makes it easier for people to participate. Let me explain…

It wasn’t that long ago that devs coming from a Computer Science background were deriding CSS for its simplicity, complaining that “it’s broken” and turning their noses up at it. That rhetoric, thankfully, is waning. Nowadays they’re far more likely to acknowledge that CSS might be simple, but it isn’t easy. Concepts like the cascade and specificity are real head-scratchers, and any prior knowledge from imperative programming languages won’t help you in this declarative world—all your hard-won experience and know-how isn’t fungible. Instead, it seems as though all this cascading and specificity is butchering the modularity of your nicely isolated components.

It’s no surprise that programmers with this kind of background would treat CSS as damage and find ways to route around it. The many flavours of CSS-in-JS are testament to this. From a programmer’s point of view, this solution has made things easier. Best of all, as long as it’s being done on the server, there’s no penalty for end users. But now the price is paid in the diversity of your team. In order to participate, a Computer Science programming mindset is now pretty much a requirement. For someone coming from a more declarative background—with really good HTML and CSS skills—everything suddenly seems needlessly complex. And as Tantek observed:

Complexity reinforces privilege.

The result is a form of gatekeeping. I don’t think it’s intentional. I don’t think it’s malicious. It’s being done with the best of intentions, in pursuit of efficiency and productivity. But these code decisions are reflected in hiring practices that exclude people with different but equally valuable skills and perspectives.

Rachel describes HTML, CSS and our vanishing industry entry points:

If we make it so that you have to understand programming to even start, then we take something open and enabling, and place it back in the hands of those who are already privileged.

I think there’s a comparison here with toxic masculinity. Toxic masculinity is obviously terrible for women, but it’s also really shitty for men in the way it stigmatises any male behaviour that doesn’t fit its worldview. Likewise, if the only people your team is interested in hiring are traditional programmers, then those programmers are going to resent having to spend their time dealing with semantic markup, accessibility, styling, and other disciplines that they never trained in. Heydon correctly identifies this as reluctant gatekeeping:

By assuming the role of the Full Stack Developer (which is, in practice, a computer scientist who also writes HTML and CSS), one takes responsibility for all the code, in spite of its radical variance in syntax and purpose, and becomes the gatekeeper of at least some kinds of code one simply doesn’t care about writing well.

This hurts everyone. It’s bad for your team. It’s even worse for the wider development community.

Last year, I was asked “Is there a fear or professional challenge that keeps you up at night?” I responded:

My greatest fear for the web is that it becomes the domain of an elite priesthood of developers. I firmly believe that, as Tim Berners-Lee put it, “this is for everyone.” And I don’t just mean it’s for everyone to use—I believe it’s for everyone to make as well. That’s why I get very worried by anything that raises the barrier to entry to web design and web development.

I’ve described a number of dichotomies here:

• Materials vs. tools,
• Front of the front end vs. back of the front end,
• User experience vs. developer experience,
• Client-side rendering vs. server-side rendering,
• Declarative languages vs. imperative languages.

But the split that worries the most is this:

• The people who make the web vs. the people who are excluded from making the web.

Spring sprung last weekend. Saturday was an unseasonably nice and sunny day, so Jessica and I decided to make the most of it with a walk in the countryside.

Our route took us from Woodingdean to Lewes. Woodingdean isn’t too far away from where we live, but the walk there would’ve been beside a busy road so we just took the bus for that portion.

Being on the bus means we didn’t stop to take note of an interesting location. Just outside the Nuffield hospital is the unassuming opening of the Woodingdean Water Well. This is the deepest hand-dug well in the world—deeper than the Empire State Building is tall—dug over the course of four years in the mid nineteenth century. I didn’t even know of its existence until Brian told me about it.

From Woodingdean, we walked along Juggs Road. Originally a Roman ridgeway, it was named for the fishwives travelling from Brighton to Lewes with their marine wares. This route took us over Newmarket Hill, the site of many mock battles in the 18th century, for the amusement of the royals on a day out from the Pavilion.

Walking through Kingston, we came to the Ashcombe Windmill, where I pet a nice horsey.

Then it was on into Lewes, where we could admire the handsome architecture of Lewes Cathedral …the local wags’ name for Harveys Brewery. Thanks to Ben’s connections, Clearleft managed to get a behind-the-scenes tour of this Victorian marvel a few months ago.

This time round, there would be no brewery tour, but that’s okay—there’s a shop right outside. We chose an appropriate ale to accompany a picnic of pork pie and apple.

Having walked all the way to Lewes, it would’ve been a shame to return empty-handed, so before getting the bus back to Brighton, we popped into Mays Farm Cart and purchased a magnificent forerib of beef straight from the farm.

‘Twas a most worthwhile day out.

I woke up in Geneva. The celebrations to mark the 30th anniversary of the World Wide Web were set to begin early in the morning.

It must be said, March 12th 1989 is kind of an arbitrary date. Maybe the date that the first web page went online should mark the birth of the web (though the exact date might be hard to pin down). Or maybe it should be August 6th, 1991—the date that Tim Berners-Lee announced the web to the world (well, to the alt.hypertext mailing list at least). Or you could argue that it should be April 30th, 1993, the date when the technology of the web was officially put into the public domain.

In the end, March 12, 1989 is as good a date as any to mark the birth of the web. The date that Tim Berners-Lee shared his proposal. That’s when the work began.

Exactly thirty years later, myself, Martin, and Remy are registered and ready to attend the anniversay event in the very same room where the existence of the Higgs boson was announced. There’s coffee, and there are croissants, but despite the presence of Lou Montulli, there are no cookies.

The doors to the auditorium open and we find some seats together. The morning’s celebrations includes great panel discussions, and an interview with Tim Berners-Lee himself. In the middle of it all, they show a short film about our hack week recreating the very first web browser.

It was surreal. There we were, at CERN, in the same room as the people who made the web happen, and everyone’s watching a video of us talking about our fun project. It was very weird and very cool.

Afterwards, there was cake. And a NeXT machine—the same one we had in the room during our hack week. I feel a real attachment to that computer.

We chatted with lots of lovely people. I had the great pleasure of meeting Peggie Rimmer. It was her late husband, Mike Sendall, who gave Tim Berners-Lee the time (and budget) to pursue his networked hypertext project. Peggie found Mike’s copy of Tim’s proposal in a cupboard years later. This was the copy that Mike had annotated with his now-famous verdict, “vague but exciting”. Angela has those words tattooed on her arm—Peggie got a kick out of that.

Eventually, Remy and I had to say our goodbyes. We had to get to the airport to catch our flight back to London. Taxi, airport, plane, tube; we arrived at the Science Museum in time for the evening celebrations. We couldn’t have been far behind Tim Berners-Lee. He was making a 30 hour journey from Geneva to London to Lagos. We figured seeing him at two out of those three locations was plenty.

By the end of the day we were knackered but happy. The day wasn’t all sunshine and roses. There was a lot of discussion about the negative sides of the web, and what could be improved. A lot of that was from Sir Tim itself. But mostly it was a time to think about just how transformative the web has been in our lives. And a time to think about the next thirty years …and the web we want.

I’m back at CERN.

I’m back at CERN because tomorrow, March 12th, 2019, is exactly thirty years on from when Tim Berners-Lee submitted his original “vague but exciting” Information Management: A Proposal. Tomorrow morning, bright and early, there’s an event at CERN called Web@30.

Thanks to my neglibable contribution to the recreation of the WorldWideWeb browser, I’ve wrangled an invitation to attend. Remy and Martin are here too, and I know that the rest of the team are with us in spirit.

I’m so excited about this! I’m such a nerd for web history, it’s going to be like Christmas for me.

If you’re up early enough, you can watch the event on a livestream. The whole thing will be over by mid-morning. Then, Remy and I will take an afternoon flight back to England …just in time for the evening event at London’s Science Museum.

The unstoppable engine of An Event Apart in Seattle rolls onward. The second talk of the second day is from the indominatable Una Kravets. Her talk is called From Ideation to Iteration: Design Thinking for Work and for Life. Here’s the description:

Have you ever had a looming deadline and no idea where to start? Do you have a big task to face but are having trouble figuring out how to get there? Have you ever wanted to learn a technology, or build a side project but didn’t know what to build? In this talk, Una will go over an actionable approach and several techniques for applying design thinking to our work and every aspect of our lives. This includes ideating product features, blog post ideas, or even what general direction we want to move toward in our businesses. We’ll go over traditional approaches and breakout techniques that will leave you feeling more in control and ready to reach your goals.

Let’s see if I can keep up with this…

Una’s going to talk about design thinking. Una does a variety of different work outside her day job—a podcast, dev doodles, etc. Sometimes at work she’s given big, big tasks like “build a design system.” Her reaction is “whut?” How do you even start with a task like that.

Also, we make big goals sometimes. Who makes new year’s resolutions? But what does “get more fit” or “earn more income” even mean?

In this talk, Una will break things down and show how design thinking can be applied to anything.

Design thinking

A stategic, solution-based approach to solving problems.

It’s a process. It’s iterative. It’s used by IBM, Apple, GE, and it’s taught to students at a lot of different universities.

Tim Brown of Ideo points out that there’s a Venn diagram of feasability, desirability, and viability. In the middle is the point of innovation.

The steps are:

1. Empathise — develop a deep understanding of the challenge
2. Define — clearly articulate the problem.
3. Ideate — brainstorm potential solutions.
4. Prototype — design a protoype to
5. Test — and iterate.

Una feels that the feedback part is potentially missing there. IBM uses a loop diagram to include feedback. Ideo uses these steps:

1. Frame a question
2. Gather inspiration
3. Generate ideas
4. Make ideas tangible
5. Test to learn
6. Share the story

Another way to think about this is how the teams interact. There’s divergence and convergence throughout. Then there’s the double diamond: design, deliver, discover.

Ideo wrote a book called Design Thinking for Libraries. It has some useful tools and diagrams. Una found this fascinating because it wasn’t specifically about products. In healthcare, GE Health used design thinking for their Adventure Series MRI scanners—it resulted in 80% less need to use sedatives. The solution might seem obvious to us in hindsight, but it wouldn’t have been obvious to medical professionals in their everyday busy lives.

Design thinking is bullshit, says Natasha Jen. She describes how it’s become an over-used term that has lost its value. Una can relate—she gets annoyed when there’s too much talking and not enough doing. Design thinking is not diagrams and sticky notes. It’s a process. It’s very much about doing something to shift perspective. It’s another tool in our toolkit, even if it has become an overused term like “synergy.”

Back in 2014, when Una was working at IBM, she thought design thinking was stupid. It seemed to be all talk, talk, talk. It felt tedious. It was 75% talking and 25% development. The balance wasn’t right.

But it’s also true that solutioning too early leads to cruft. If you end up going back to the drawing board, maybe the time could’ve been better spent doing some design thinking up front. Focus on the problem, not the solution.

Now some developers might be thinking that this is outside their area. But it can really help you in your career. It can help you choose technologies. Also, everyone on the team, regardless of role, is responsible for the product.

1. Empathise

Understand your users and the challenge. This could be a task that a user is trying to accomplish, or it could be you trying to get a raise.

Sometimes we forget who our user is. The techniques in this first step helps us solve their needs, not our needs.

You might have many users that you’re trying to help, but try focusing in on a few. You can create personas. When Una was working at Digital Ocean, the users were developers. The personas reflected this. Do the research to get to know your users.

Next, you can create an empathy map for your users. What are their goals? What are their hopes? What will they gain from your product?

Connect the empathy map to a specific context—a goal and or a scenario that the user is going through.

Bear in mind that there are many layers to your user. There are conscious rational thoughts, but also subconscious emotional thoughts. Empathy mapping helps you understand how to best communicate with your user.

Una shares a real-life scenario of hers: create a new shop-able product that increases time on site. That’s a pretty big goal. She creates a persona for a college-educated woman working in the medical field who commutes on the subway, keeps a skin-caring routing, and is getting into cake-making. Next, Una creates an empathy map for this persona. What she says, thinks, feels, and does. All of this is within the context of browsing your fashion media website casually at work.

2: Define

The problem statement should be:

• Human-centred,
• Specific, but not too technical (don’t solutionise too soon),
• Narrow in scope.

How can we best create a product-highlighting web experience that Rosalyn will enjoy to increase her time on site?

You can use a tool with two columns: As-Is and to-Be. The first column is what users currently do. The second column is what you want to achieve.

3. Ideate

This is the fun part. Good old-fashioned brainstorming is good here. Go for quantity here. Get loads of ideas out.

There’s also a “worst possible ideas” game you can play at this stage. It can be a good ice-breaker.

Have a second round of brainstorming where you play the “yes, and…” game to build on the first round.

When Una was working on The Zoe Report, she found that moodboards were really useful. The iteration cycle was very fast. A moodboard allowed them to skip a lot of the back and forth between design and development. They built the website without any visual design mock-ups. They prototyped quickly, tested quickly, and shipped quickly.

Journey-mapping is the next tool you can use in this ideation phase. Map out the steps between the start and end of a user journey. Keep it simple. This is a great time to refine your product and reduce complexity.

Next, start sketching out ideas. Again, this is a great time to uncover issues and solve problems before things get too defined. But remember, when you’re showcasing your ideas in sketches, too many ideas can lead to analyis paralysis.

Oh dear. Jam. Jam. Jam. Jam. Jam. Yes, Una is using the paradox-of-choice jam example …the study who’s findings could not be reproduced.

4. Prototype

Go forth and build. A prototype can exist on a number of different axes:

• Representation—the form it takes.
• Precision—the detail it contains.
• Interactivity—the extent a user can interact with it.
• Evolution—the life stage it is at.

There are lot of prototyping tools out there. Prototypr.io helps you find the right tool for you. It breaks things down by fidelity and life cycle.

But not all prototyping has to be digital. Paper prototyping only needs pen, paper, and scissors. Some tips:

• Use a transparency sheet for forms.
• Use well-visible and mid-tip pens.
• Draw up your prototype in black and white—people can get caught up in colour.

But on the web, Una recommends getting to digital as quickly as possible because interaction is such a big part of the experience. That’s why Una likes to prototype in code. But this is still a rapid prototyping phase so don’t get too caught up in the details.

5. Test

Testing with internal teams is fine during the ideation phase, but to understand how users will relate to your product, you need to test with representative people. We are not our users.

As well as the user, have a facilitator, a computer, and a scriber. As a facilitator, it’s a good idea to reduce the amount of input you give a user. Don’t hand-hold too much or you will give away your pre-existing knowledge. Encourage your user to be verbal.

Sessioncam is a tool for creating a heatmap of where people are interacting. There are also tools for tracking clicks or mouse hovers. These all feel so utterly icky to me.

The metrics you might be looking to gather could be click-through rate, time-on-site, etc. But, Una cautions, be very wary of adding all these third-party scripts to your site and slowing it down. Who’s testing the A/B tests?

On Bustle, Una wanted to measure interactions on mobile. They tested different UI elements for interactions. They ended up updating the product with a horizontal swiping component. They were able to improve the product and ship a more refined experience.

6. Review and iterate

Una feels that this step is the most important. Analyse your successes and failures, and plan to improve.

Technology changes over time so what’s feasible and viable also changes.

Design thinking on the daily

You can use design thinking in your everyday life. Maybe you want to learn JavaScript, or write blog posts, or get more fit. Una used design thinking brainstorming to break down her goals, categorise and organise them.

“Get better at JavaScript” is a goal that Una has every year.

Empathise. In this situation, the user is you. You can still create a persona of yourself. Define. Why do you want to get better at JavaScript? Is it about making better use of your time? Ideate. There are so many different ways to learn. There are books and video courses. Or you could have a project to focus on. Break. It. Down! Create actionable steps and define how you will measure progress. Match the list of things you want to learn with the list of possible side projects. Prototype. Don’t take it literally. Just build something. Test. You’re testing on yourself in this case. Review. Una does an annual review. It’s a nice therapeutic exercise and helps her move forward into the next year with actionable goals.

Another goal might be “Write a blog post.”

Empathise. Your users are your potential readers. Who do you have in mind? Make personas. Define. What’s the topic? Ideate. If you don’t know what to write about, brainstorm. What are you working on at work that you’re learning from? Select one to try. Prototype. Write. Test. Maybe show it to co-workers. Review. How did it go? Good? Bad? Refine your process for the next blog post.

Here’s a goal: “Buy a gift for someone.”

Empathise. What does this person like? What have they enjoyed receiving in the past? Define. Is the gift something they’ll enjoy for a long time? Something they can share? Ideate. Bounce ideas off friends and relatives. Prototype. In this case, this means getting the gift. Review. Did they like it?

“Get Fit.”

In this case, the review part is probably the most important part.

Marie Kondo asks “Does this spark joy?” Ask the same question of your goals.

Remember, design thinking is not just about talking, and sticky notes. It’s about getting in the right headspace for your users.

Design thinking matters—because everything we do, we do for people. Having the tools to see through the lens of those people will help you be a more well-rounded person.

Surprise! Patterns Day is back!

The first Patterns Day was in the Summer of 2017, and it was a glorious—a single day devoted to all things design system-y: pattern libraries, style guides, maintainability, reusability. It was a lot of fun, so let’s do it again!

Patterns Day 2 will take place on Friday, June 28th, in the beautiful Duke of York’s cinema in Brighton. If you went to the first Patterns Day, then you’ll know how luxuriously comfy it is in there.

Tickets are £175+VAT. The format will likely be the same as before: an action-packed day of eight talks, each 30 minutes long.

I’ve got an amazing line-up of speakers, but instead of telling you the whole line-up straightaway, I’m going to tease a little bit, and announce more speakers over the next few weeks and months. For now, here are the first three speakers, to give you an idea of the quality you can expect:

• All the way from the US of A, it’s Una Kravets, who needs no introduction.
• From the Government Digital Service, we’ve got Amy Hupe—she’ll have plenty to share about the GOV.UK design system.
• And we’ve got Yaili, now a senior designer at Microsoft, where she works on the Azure DevOps design system.

Patterns Day will have something for everyone. We’ll be covering design, development, content strategy, product management, and accessibility. So you might want to make this a one-day outing for your whole team.

If you want to get a feel for what the day will be like, you can watch the videos of last year’s talks

Tickets for last year’s Patterns Day went fairly fast—the Duke of York’s doesn’t have a huge capacity—so don’t dilly-dally too long before grabbing your ticket!