16 June 2023
Pixel Pioneers Bristol
Conference
An affordable one-day conference of practical and inspiring front-end and UX/UI design talks, featuring nine world-class speakers. SOLD OUT!
Photos
The 5th Pixel Pioneers Bristol conference at the M Shed on 16 June 2023. All rights reserved, Pixel Pioneers 2023.
Schedule
All sessions and timings are subject to change. We will update the schedule as soon as we confirm talks and side events.
Thursday, 15 June 2023 (Warm-up event)
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Nerd Pub Quiz
Our friends at zeroheight are hosting another edition of their legendary nerd pub quiz. Be prepared for even nerdier and more infuriating questions!
The quiz will take place upstairs at The Famous Royal Navy Volunteer (kick-off is at 8:30pm). Expect everything from front-end dev to video games to music to anime. Teams will be formed on the night, the quiz master is Luke Murphy, and drinks are on zeroheight.To sign up, just drop your first name and email address into this form.
Friday, 16 June 2023 (Conference)
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Doors Open and Registration
Pick up your conference pass, grab a tea or coffee and start mingling and exploring the sponsors' stands!
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Welcome
Phil Hawksworth is back to MC the conference and take you through the day!
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Talk Details
Jeremy Keith
Declarative Design
Different browsers, different devices, different network speeds… designing for the web can feel like a never-ending battle for control. But what if the solution is to relinquish control? Instead of battling the unknowns, we can lean into them. In the world of programming, there’s the idea of declarative languages: describing what you want to achieve without specifying the exact steps to get there. In this talk, we’ll take this concept of declarative programming and apply it to designing for the web.
Instead of focusing on controlling the outputs of the design process, we’ll look at creating the right inputs instead. Leave the final calculations for the outputs to the browser – that’s what computers are good at. We’ll look at CSS features, design systems, design principles, and more. Then you’ll be ready to embrace the fluid, ever-changing, glorious messiness of the World Wide Web!
Video / Transcript / Interview
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Ire Aderinokun
CSS, JavaScript & Accessibility
HTML is, by default, accessible. By simply using “Plain Old Semantic HTML”, we have the ability to create rich and accessible web pages that can meaningfully stand on their own. More often than not, what makes a web page less accessible is the CSS and JavaScript we add to that HTML. With these additions, we can alter the meaning of elements, change their behaviour, or even block access to content entirely.
In this talk, we’ll explore how CSS and JavaScript can contribute, negatively or positively, to accessibility. We’ll learn when it’s appropriate to use these technologies and how they can be used to make even more accessible websites - from leveraging CSS to adapt experiences to different types of users, to using JavaScript to ensure our dynamic web applications work across all devices.
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Morning Break
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Morgane Peng
We’re Not Doing Design Systems Properly and That’s Okay
How do you ‘do’ design systems? Expectations are so high nowadays. Implement design tokens. Have a dedicated design system team. Get a design system manager. Wait, does your design system even have a name?
There isn’t one way to do design systems. Ours ticks none of these boxes, yet today, it allows us to build from the simplest to the most complex financial tools, and design systematically across our services. In this session, I’ll share the lessons we learned on prioritising impacts over grip.
Takeaways
- Understand that there’s no one way to do design systems
- How to adapt for adoption
- How to use the design system mindset for large scale pattern-based thinking
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Jules Mahé ⚡
Lightning Talk: A Tale of Red and Green
Once upon a time, brands used red and green as their primary colours without knowing they would be a mess to use because of all the danger and success cases. This story is about how to successfully reach the happy ending your brand deserves.
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Cassie Evans
Animating the Impossible
How best do we achieve smooth UI animations when dealing with DOM changes, responsive layouts, dynamic content and user interaction? Well... we start off by flipping our whole approach upside down. In this session we’ll lift the magicians curtain, take a look at some ‘impossible’ animation challenges, and learn how to approach them using a rather exciting animation technique.
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Lunch (75 minutes)
See our location guide for recommendations on where to grab a bite to eat.
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Umar Hansa
Modern CSS Development and Debugging
In this session, you'll learn how to use modern tooling to your advantage when working on CSS code. Quickly scaffold out your project, use code snippets in any context, setup powerful editor workflows, and more. You'll also learn about tools that can help with CSS performance and visual regression testing, so you can confidently change your code while trusting the process!
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Chui Chui Tan
Designing for Your International Audiences
Designing an experience that matches what your global customers want, expect and need does not refer just to the visual elements. It also means designing your product propositions, marketing or other business strategies that would ‘work’ best in a specific market.
Many businesses are convinced that designing for other markets means copying their successful business model in the home country. They believe that localisation is about translation. They design their products without properly understanding what changes are needed and why they are needed. Even big companies do not always get it right.
In this talk, Chui Chui will discuss how these inaccurate perceptions can lead to flawed business and design decisions. She will also cover how having a clear holistic understanding of your global audiences and their context could lead to a better global market launch and growth. Practical tips will be provided to guide you through the process.
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Afternoon Break
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Christian Heilmann
Web Development in the Times of AI
Generative AI is the big new thing with about 50 new products a day promising people that they can be designers, writers, developers and many other things just by asking a machine the right questions. What does that mean for web development? Are we redundant, as many headlines proclaim? Was moving from documents to components to design systems a step in the direction of our own demise? Should we welcome our new robotic overlords or can we prevent becoming outdated and too expensive?
Chris Heilmann looks back at 20+ years of technology hype in the web development space and will set your mind at ease that this is a massive change, but one that everybody can benefit from.
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End and Social!
Join us at The Cock & Tail for a free drink on us!
Don’t miss a thing!
Stay up to date with the latest Pixel Pioneers event news and blog posts. Our regular newsletter is packed with practical and inspiring content, handpicked by Oliver Lindberg, and it’s here that you will also find out first about any discounts and offers that we have lined up for you.
Huge thanks to our partners
Partner with us
Without the stellar support of our partners, it wouldn’t be possible to run these events, and even if it was, the experience just wouldn’t be the same. If you’re interested in getting involved, just drop us an email and we’ll discuss how we can team up.