WebDevCon 2016

Today I attended Amazon’s WebDevCon. The focus of this conference is “bringing together the community to discuss the latest trends and topics in our industry”. Amazon has held this conference for the last 7 years and this year the conference was open to everyone.

The highlights of the conference for me included:

Responsive Color by Clarissa Peterson
Clarissa’s talk explored how people perceive color differently and how various devices and environments (dark or light) affect colors. She also talked about various ways of identifying colors, testing contrast and handling colors by using Sass. This is an interesting topic that goes beyond making colors “web accessible”. See the slides from this presentation and learn more about Clarissa Peterson.

Testing CSS by Hans Sprecher
In his presentation, Hans reminded attendees that one line of improper CSS can break a website. Because of this, it is important to include testing CSS as part of developing websites. Hans described various tools and methods for testing and in particular a new screenshot comparison tool called Wraith, created by developers at BBC News. You can download Wrath from GitHub. Learn more about Hans Sprecher.

Usefulness of Uselessness by Brad Bouse
Too often in our work, the focus is on “utility and efficiency”, meaning that our work is meant to fulfill a specific function and be completed within a certain timeline. While this is a reality, these conditions can limit creativity. Brad suggests that it’s important to take the time to “make a useless art project” and to view “playing with code as a super power”. He presented a great example: Between Page and Screen, a book that he created with his wife. This was a project that they did “for fun”, which opened up their creativity and allowed them to gain skills that they may not have learned otherwise. I’ve found this to be true in my work as a designer — sometimes you have to play to be creative. You can watch a version of this talk on YouTube and learn more about Brad at Brad Wears Glasses.

There was a total of 15 different presentations today that covered a wide range of topics. Thank you Amazon for this event!