Web Directions Year round learning for product, design and engineering professionals

The architecture of web applications is undergoing a fundamental transformation. More than a simple migration from old to new, a fundamental rethinking about how we structure, deliver, and reason about web software. At Web Directions Developer Summit this November, we’re bringing together practitioners who are actively reshaping these patterns in production to help you chart your organisation’s way forward.

The Evolution Path

Juntao Qiu from Atlassian maps this transformation in “The Evolution of Frontend System Design.” Frontend development starts with a single “happy-path” mockup, but real applications must handle internationalization, accessibility, varying devices, performance constraints, and data complexity.

Juntao traces the evolutionary path: from static pages to components, shared state, caching, normalization, performance optimization, and beyond. The value isn’t just understanding where we’ve been—it’s locating your current project on this journey and discovering the next essential system concept to embrace. This is architectural thinking grounded in real-world evolution, not abstract theory.

Backend for Frontend: A Pattern Whose Time Has Come

The move from monoliths to microservices creates a common problem: how do you efficiently serve diverse frontend needs without coupling your backend services to specific client requirements? Lovee Jain from Prezzee tackles this in “BFFs Could Be Your New Best Friends Forever.”

The Backend for Frontend pattern creates dedicated backend services for specific frontend experiences—mobile, web, third-party integrations. Lovee shares real experience from Prezzee’s transition, including when BFFs help and when they don’t. She’ll demonstrate implementation in Google Cloud, but more importantly, she’ll share the architectural thinking that determines whether this pattern fits your needs.

The Browser as Platform

Jono Alderson makes a compelling case in “The Browser Strikes Back: Rethinking the Modern Dev Stack.” Modern browsers provide powerful native capabilities for layout, animation, state, and storage—the kinds of things we once needed JavaScript libraries and frameworks to achieve.

This isn’t nostalgia for simpler times. It’s recognizing that treating the browser as an ally rather than an obstacle unlocks simpler, faster, and more resilient architectures. The implications extend beyond performance—it’s about architectural decisions that reduce complexity and improve maintainability.

Offline-First and Local-First Architecture

Zach Jensz pushes these ideas further in “Offline AI Web Apps.” Zero load time even without WiFi. LLMs running in-browser, completely private. No app store fees to Apple or Google. All possible today using Service Worker, Cache, IndexedDB, OPFS, and webGPU.

These APIs are shrouded in misconception, but they enable exceptional user experiences. Zach will dig into their history and demonstrate how to use them effectively. Combined with in-browser AI, this approach represents a fundamental architectural shift—from server-dependent to truly local-first applications.

Feature Flags: Decoupling Deployment from Release

Geshan Manandhar from Simply Wall St. brings over a decade of experience with feature flags to bear in “Embrace Feature Flags, Unlock Better Customer Experience and Developer Confidence.”

The key insight: deploying code is a technical task, but releasing a feature is a business process. Feature flags decouple these concerns, allowing you to deploy continuously while controlling releases incrementally. Geshan will share real examples—gradually releasing stock portfolios to thousands of users, managing limits incrementally, and safely testing major features in production with minimal customer impact.

This isn’t just about risk management. It’s about architectural patterns that enable continuous delivery while maintaining developer confidence and customer satisfaction.

Design Systems as Architecture

The relationship between design systems and application architecture is tighter than many realize. Mandy Michael explores this in “Developing a Shared Language for Designers and Engineers.” Tools like Figma Code Connect bridge the gap between design files and production code, but they’re part of a larger architectural pattern.

Tammie Lister extends this thinking in “From Components to Prompts,” examining how open design systems provide the strongest foundation for AI-integrated workflows. Design systems aren’t just UI libraries—they’re architectural decisions about consistency, maintainability, and scalability.

Mathematics and Structure

Dmitry Baranovskiy from Adobe takes a longer view in “Let No One Ignorant of Geometry Enter.” Geometry has been the silent architect of art, design, and technology from ancient Greece to the present. The mathematical structures underlying design aren’t decorative—they’re fundamental architectural principles that still shape how we build for the web.

Understanding these foundations changes how you think about visual systems, animation, and interaction. It’s architecture at a deeper level—the mathematical structures that make designs work.

Why Architecture Matters Now

Poor architectural decisions compound over time. The monolith that was fine at launch becomes unmaintainable at scale. The tightly coupled backend that served one client becomes a bottleneck with three. The framework-dependent code that solved immediate problems creates long-term technical debt.

But good architectural patterns—Backend for Frontend, offline-first, feature flags, browser-native approaches—provide leverage. They make systems easier to reason about, modify, and scale. They reduce complexity rather than adding it.

The practitioners at Web Directions Developer Summit aren’t theorizing about architecture—they’re sharing patterns that work in production at companies like Atlassian, Prezzee, Adobe, Simply Wall St., and Octopus Deploy.

This is your opportunity to learn from their experience, avoid their mistakes, and adopt patterns that will serve you for years.