Large Language Models have the potential to hugely shift what it means to interact with a web browser.

Here’s a prediction: the web will soon be mediated by agents, not just rendered by web browsers. Every user will have their own AI interpreting information for them, and executing tasks on their behalf.

. . . I know, right.

What does this mean now, and what does it mean for the future of the web? Let's delve into what a mediated web might look like, and how it could impact the internet ecosystem. Fasten your seatbelts, we could be in for a bumpy ride.

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Have you noticed how the web we love is becoming an eerily lifeless place? Its public spaces are filling with a mix of bad faith actors and automated predators like bots, advertisers, clickbait attention-grabbers, and angry twitter mobs. Like a dark forest, all the living creatures are quietly hiding out of sight.

Generative AI systems are about to make this situation a whole lot worse: We now have tools that can churn out tens of thousands of words, images, and videos in seconds.

The volume of mundane, low-quality, and uninspired content published to the web is about to explode. How will we find original insights under this pile of cruft? How will we figure out which authors are flesh-and-blood humans we can form emotional and intellectual relationships with? And does it even matter if something was made by an AI instead of a human?

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It feels like a rapidly changing world.

But is it really?

The Dark Swan Institute founder Tea Uglow takes a macro look backwards and forwards at the web and society to make some predictions about the future of the internet. Join Tea for a breakdown of the zeitgeist identifying precedents, patterns and potentials. Hear about the trends we saw coming, and those that we should be looking out for as we scan the horizon.

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Generative AI isn't the biggest thing since the Web - it's the cognitive equivalent of the steam engine, multiplying human intelligence just as the steam engine multiplied human (and animal) muscle power. Cranky, unreliable, even dangerous, the early age of steam has a lot to teach us of these early days of Generative AI...

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How do you change the behaviour of almost 200,000 people in under 4 years?

Radical collaboration.

We are responsible for creating products that change people’s lives, and that means challenging ourselves to think and work differently.

Learn five key ingredients that will transform your product team into an unbeatable force for impact from someone who has been there, done that.

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Customer-centricity is crucial for success in today's highly competitive world. To achieve this, companies need to develop a deep understanding of the customer journey.

This talk will explore the concept of a Customer Journey Framework, a tool that systematically describes customers' end-to-end experiences, including touchpoints, interactions, metrics, and emotions. By involving all stakeholders and data sources, companies can effectively implement this framework and improve their customer experience.

Attendees will gain a clear understanding of the Customer Journey Framework and its importance in any Product and CX strategy. They will also receive actionable insights on how to drive innovation and improve customer-centricity.

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In the fast-paced world of product, mentoring has been the key to unlocking my personal growth and fueling my career. But it’s not always easy to get right. That's because while finding a good mentor is hard, being a good mentor is even harder.

In this talk I’ll share effective ways to conquer the challenges of both finding and being a great mentor, through stories and hard lessons I’ve learned along the way.

You'll leave armed with practical strategies and actionable tips to establish and nurture successful mentoring relationships. Plus, I'll equip you with a handy tool you can put into action right away, ensuring you waste no time in reaping the benefits.

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With the rise of OpenAI and generative AI tools, more than ever we’re adopting and talking about AI as a staple in our day-to-day.

ChatGPT and DALL·E 2 have been gamechangers for many of us, while disrupting industries and proving the future is AI.

It’s no wonder AI and Machine Learning remain a shiny object that business leaders want in their value proposition. But as a Product Manager, how do you know it’s the right time to build machine learning into your product? And how do you actually do it?

Specialising in AI Product Management - with experience building both B2C and B2B machine learning products across Social Media & Adtech platforms - Karla will be sharing learnings on how to validate Machine Learning opportunities, and a process to take you from validation through to launch.

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Businesses rely on good data to make thoughtful decisions. When that underlying data is of poor quality, it can lead to unexpected and costly outcomes. So, it is very important to prevent bad data from occurring in the first place, by understanding how it gets created.

In this talk, Shailvi will explain the typical lifecycle of data, and walk through the phases where bad data gets introduced. Using relatable examples, she will explain the nuances of catching bad data early in the pipeline. She'll also cover ways to diagnose common data problems, find the root cause, and highlight ways to fix those issues.

Join Shailvi for a blueprint for anyone who works with data and to make a case for their company resources to be spent on proactively addressing data quality.

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Corporate politics can sometimes feel like a treacherous battleground, where alliances shift, power struggles ensue, and maneuvering becomes the norm.

It's a realm not too dissimilar from the world of Westeros depicted in the TV series "Game of Thrones."

Avoid a "Red Wedding" end to your career by following Carl's Guide.

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Of all the ideas about the birth of breakthrough products, one element is widely agreed to be irreducibly required – a powerful founding vision. This vision must come mysteriously into being, brought forth by an ineffable mystic with access to capital.

I'm here to tell you that this is half true. To do something new it really is necessary to see further than others. But visionary leadership need not be mysterious. Human creativity is a mature field of research and these matters are amenable to scientific enquiry. There are techniques available to nurture, discover, recognise, articulate and develop visions of a better future, just as there are proven methods to stifle, hide, ignore, obscure and destroy them.

Three years ago I was asked to lead a program at our national science agency to upend how science is done; to utterly revolutionise it by harnessing AI and other emerging technologies to realise bold, transformative visions of the future. At that point, no specific vision had been identified. That was my job.

Fortunately, human collective intelligence and creativity has been my research topic and subject of fascination for over a decade. So I gathered some likeminded souls and we set about deploying the science of creativity to build a program that could elicit and articulate visions from a population of a few thousand brilliant scientists and technologists, and then synthesise and manifest them through the good offices of our product designers and engineers.

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There has always been tension between Human Centred Design (HCD) and the principles of Agile software development. Yet, the traditional, “Waterfall” approach never truly offered an attractive alternative. In this framework, discovery was considered a phase focused on rigidly defining the end product up-front.

But it can be so much more useful.

It can be iterative, helping teams shape the product as it evolves. It can be inclusive, bringing together diverse perspectives to determine what adds value. And it can finally build a bridge between HCD and Agile development, combining the best aspects of both.

This talk provides practical guidance — with real world examples — on how product teams can effortlessly integrate discovery into the work they do every day. And hopefully make it fun.

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In November last year, ChatGPT came into the world and promptly turned the tech industry on its head. A major search engine issued a code red, business models were in jeopardy and some stock prices halved. Advent of Code was won in 10 secs on Day 3 and every profession had its moment of “how vulnerable are we?” to the advancement of AI, where large language models are easily mistaken for generalised artificial intelligence.

Amidst all this chaos, companies scrambled to capitalise on the potential of AI, spinning up products and companies with near-indistinguishable landing pages. Web Directions resurrected its AI conference. And I, as a software PM in 2023, found myself at the doorstep of a new “AI is eating the world” moment, having missed the frontiers of software’s voracious appetite more than a decade ago.

This talk covers everything I learned bringing magic to Canva in Magic Design, an AI design tool. From first asking “What is GPT?” to launching a product mere months later, I’ll dive into how conventional development processes and the “wisdom” of experience are assumptions in disguise; explore the amorphous nature of usability, feasibility and viability in a fast-moving environment; and why at the end of the day, there’s still a need for Product Managers. Maybe.

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Chaos is inevitable in a WIP world. Regardless of how kickass your Figma components are, how well you’ve defined your milestones, or how sophisticated your architecture is, problems and humans change, and things rarely stay linear.

Trust us, here at Zendesk we know all about it. Changing requirements, confusing customer feedback, and staying siloed wasn’t working. Strategies that earned us early wins weren’t going to enable us for the next part of the journey. We had to do something.

So we employed new tactics to help navigate these trials and tribulations while solving gnarly customer problems.

What we’re trying isn’t conventional, isn’t without fault, nor have we landed, but the fruit it’s yielding is really surprising.

What are we actually doing?

We’re helping designers dig deep and comprehend technical hurdles so they can design with a realistic lens. We’re empowering developers to attend early morning customer interviews. We’re letting PMs close JIRA roadmap tabs and open Figjam instead to synth on research findings.

Want to learn more? Come and hear it from the horse's mouth: a designer, a developer, and a PM sharing stories from their perspectives. Learn how these tactics are shaping their world and how they might shape yours.

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Product Futures is an initiative that defines a unified vision for the ABC’s suite of category leading digital experiences spanning screen, audio and news.

Come and learn how we approached this piece of discovery product research to best position the ABC for its next great leap forward as it transitions from a broadcast media organisation to a truly digital first and on demand provider.

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In the ever-evolving landscape of software-as-a-service, fostering a thriving product culture is paramount.

In this session we will seek to cultivate a culture deeply rooted in guiding principles. Discover how aligning your teams with these core values not only streamlines decision-making but also enhances collaboration, innovation, and customer-centricity.

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Design and development have traditionally been separate disciplines, but with the increasing complexity and demands of modern software, a new approach is needed. That’s why companies are starting to create hybrid roles, like design technologist or UX engineer, to be connectors between design and engineering. These new “hybrids” thrive on quickly going from concept to completion by creating well throughout hypotheses, exploring different ideas, and validating proof-of-concepts with users. But what are the specific steps we can take to promote the practice of design technology within our organization?

In this talk, the audience will learn: - The meaning of design engineering and the key roles within them - How design engineering can positively impact the product development process - The four principles of design engineering

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When you're looking at Web Components it can be hard to understand where it fits in. Is this a replacement for React? Is it a build target? Should I use a framework?

The short answer is: it's just another tool in your toolkit!

For the long answer: come along and hear about how Web Components can fit into everyday web development.

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Another year, another tranche of CSS features we can all use!

Discover new CSS properties we can start using today, such as dynamic viewport units, individual transform units, the popover API, and more.

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With the release of tools like ChatGPT, the excitement around AI has skyrocketed. Machine Learning is increasingly becoming a vital tool in all domains including frontend application development. However, a front-end developer might feel intimidated by the thought of having to learn complex machine-learning algorithms and new languages.

But don’t worry, this talk aims to cover how the availability of Machine Learning libraries for frontend developers makes it easy to integrate Machine Learning capabilities without any prior experience.

Let's explore some of the state-of-the-art Machine Learning libraries and tools available for frontend developers such as TensorFlowJS, Onnxjs, WebAI, and WebNN. These allow for Machine Learning inference directly on the client side: i.e. on the browser, meaning you are able to run neural networks directly in the browser. Exciting times.

Shivay will also cover how frontend developers can use APIs from OpenAI, Replicate, and serverless functions to get additional Machine Learning capabilities for their applications. This talk is ideal for all frontend developers who wish to bring their next startup idea to life, or for those looking to use AI to create a competitive differentiator.

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In this session, we'll explore how AI tools can help developers write better code. We'll cover various ways in which these tools can be used to generate code, improve skills, and debug errors. We'll also discuss their benefits, including time-saving and overall improvement of coding abilities. Moreover, we'll examine their limitations and provide tips on using them effectively. Whether you're a seasoned developer or just starting out, this session will offer valuable insights into how AI can assist you in writing better code and honing your coding skills.

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The modern web has reached the point where it can exceed the capabilities of a traditional O/S based application. We'll explore the architecture and approach for building a next generation web app that leverages capabilities that have recently become available such as WASM, WebRTC, File System Access API, Web Share API and more.

Using the example of a collaborative document editor (which has DOM inside a web worker) you'll learn how to use these APIs to build something that's only possible on the web.

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Animation often sits in between design and dev.

Sometimes a passionate designer will include animation guides into their Figma designs. If they don't, sometimes a passionate dev will take the initiative and throw in an animation of their own.

Let's talk about how to make animation a first class citizen and include it in your design process.

In this talk Matt cover some animation basics, WHY you should consider animation, examples of EFFECTIVE animations vs DISTRACTING animations, some WARNINGs about animations, the different TYPES of animation and MORE!

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We have been able to animate and transition on the web for a while, but the experience has been limited to within single pages. Successfully animating between large state changes has traditionally been hard and transitioning across full page loads is left up to the browser.

The View Transitions API aims to change that by making it easy to transition anything from elements to entire pages across navigations with just CSS and the occasional sprinkle of JavaScript. We'll take a look at how this works, see some examples, and consider the future of single and multi page applications.

Get ready to transition from boring page loads and jumpy state changes to a smooth ride into the future.

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QC," the CEO said, "I want the web-client to load 10 times faster."

We often take speedy internet for granted, but everyone's happier when they have to download less stuff - it's faster for customers, less load for platform to maintain, easier to sell, and lighter on bandwidth budgets!

In this talk, QC will go over tools and techniques that will help you drastically reduce load time, halve download size, considerably cut cache churn, and more - plus easy ways to monitor changes and prevent ourselves falling back into the same traps.

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Certain tasks on a user interaction can be blocking, giving the user a broken experience, and resulting in a low interaction to next paint(INP) metric score.

Some ways to optimise it are:

- Keep tasks small and dedicated to what they should do

- Use Chrome’s scheduler API to schedule tasks for browser

- Yield important tasks to the main thread

Join Nishu for a walk through of ways to measure and optimise the interaction experience.

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Microsoft is parallel journeys: our flagship applications are moving to the web, in whole or in part. At the same time, our internal stacks have been evolving, starting with in-house tools, through Angular, to React. This trajectory mirrors the larger frontend ecosystem's acceptance of SPA technologies, appropriate or not, over the past decade. The bad news is that none of this has gone well for users. But why? How did our community gain huge funding and put on an endless parade of self-congratulatory conferences if the results haven't stacked up?

This talk is a look into how Microsoft is beginning to turn a very large ship, and how lessons from a decade of consulting with teams building on the web can help you avoid the now-common pratfalls of an ecosystem that's only just starting to step into the stark sunlight of P&L accountability.

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Powerful anti-competitive forces have prevented the Web from reaching its full potential as the world's only truly interoperable solution to app development. Join Alex to explore the latest developments in mobile web apps, tech regulation & legislation and what you can do to help push this brighter, more open, more competitive and more interoperable future.

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The old adage, 'build it and they will come,' has not applied for decadies, and it certainly has no place in ultra-competitive modern markets.

Learn how to think about early-stage marketing strategy, and how to get that precious first hundred users.

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In the intricate world of B2B commerce, pricing is more than just numbers; it's an art that demands a deep understanding of both your business and your client's.

This session will dive into a comprehensive exploration of B2B pricing as we unpack proven pricing design concepts that will equipe attendees’ actionable insights that can help them increase Annual Contract Values (ACVs) from clients in their own companies.

Learn how to navigate client business nuances and harness the power of pricing architecture.

Whether you're a seasoned professional or new to the B2B space, discover how investing in your pricing architecture can be a game-changer for your business.

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Every company has at least a growth engineering team. Or they should. Their mission is a simple one: to increase the number of customers using and purchasing the product.

A company the size of Atlassian has many growth engineering teams. And with more teams comes more problems.

This is the story of how we learnt to manage the chaos with multiple teams running experiments, and scaled up our processes to ensure that each team can confidently run their own growth experiments. But this didn't happen overnight. Just like any experiment, it took many tries to get it where we are.

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The most under-appreciated concept for early-stage startups, language-market fit is when you find the exact right words to explain your product or service to prospective customers. You've hit when you talk about your product and your customers think, “That is EXACTLY what I’m looking for” — they feel like you’ve read their minds.

But how do you do this? And why should early-stage start-ups do this first BEFORE finding the more widely known product-market fit?

Join Sarah to walk through a four step process for finding language-market fit.

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As Product Managers, one of our roles is to grow the customer base of our product, by either developing new features, creating companion products or finding new markets for our existing products.

How do we apply the principles of strategy to grow our products?

This talk discusses the three types of strategy:

- Operational effectiveness

- Doing something radically different to our rivals

- Creating a totally new product for our existing customers or a new market

We will review when to use each approach and what they mean for growth in customers and revenue.

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Virality is where an exceptional SaaS product generates strong customer engagement that converts to organic word-of-mouth referrals, which in return leads to viral growth. Virality success stories are common among B2C brands, however, they are more elusive among B2B products.

Learn how virality can be applied in the B2B context, how to position your SaaS product to have viral traits, and how to augment in-product virality with effective brand and marketing strategies.

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Consumers have increasingly been victim to the weaponisation of dark patterns online. Whilst governments are slow to act on consumer protection laws, technology moves quickly and we are seeing a whole new breed of subtle interactions designed to manipulate consumers into transactions and behaviours that are not in their best interests.

Australian laws are well behind the EU and America, but what can we expect from the upcoming changes to Australia’s Privacy Act? Will governments move quickly enough to protect consumers in the age of Generative AI, data breaches and cyber crime?

This talk will present some of the prevalent dark patterns today, their impact on society, and what you can do to avoid them, both in your life and in your work.

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In 2022, the video game market was estimated to be valued between $175-335 billion dollars. Even without a precise figure, it remains the most valuable entertainment category globally. Naturally, non-endemic brands want in, but to date, few have been allowed to play. Just slapping a logo on an esports jersey is for n00bs.

Building upon the lessons we can learn from gaming, one of this generation's most profitable markets right now, let's have a frank discussion about how brands can build trust with their community, examine why 'out of the box thinking' is essential, and take a look at examples of those who have been allowed to sit at the table, such as DHL, Monster Energy, and others.

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Nearly all content — whether on a screen or in real life, for consumers or an enterprise audience, for marketing purposes or in a product flow — serves to do one thing: to influence people's behavior.

How do you get more people to take a chance on your offering or click on that CTA? How might you help them move confidently through an experience? How can you increase the odds of them coming back again for more?

In this talk, we’ll take a trip into the wonderful world of behavioral science for some answers.

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Rapidly evolving privacy regulations and practices are tearing up the playbook for how advertisers can measure the performance of their marketing. This makes it hard for advertisers to make informed decisions on how to improve the efficiency of their marketing and maximise their growth. Through this presentation we’ll look at the evolving landscape for measuring and improving the value from marketing, and what advertisers need to be doing to set themselves up for success now and in the future.

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Design and development have traditionally been separate disciplines, but with the increasing complexity and demands of modern software, a new approach is needed. That’s why companies are starting to create hybrid roles, like design technologist or UX engineer, to be connectors between design and engineering. These new “hybrids” thrive on quickly going from concept to completion by creating well throughout hypotheses, exploring different ideas, and validating proof-of-concepts with users. But what are the specific steps we can take to promote the practice of design technology within our organization?

In this talk, the audience will learn:

• The meaning of design engineering and the key roles within them
• How design engineering can positively impact the product development process
• The four principles of design engineering

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Design quality is essential to creating an excellent product user experience.

It can be difficult to agree on what design quality means and how to achieve it, but with a design quality criteria in place, we can hold ourselves accountable and strive for excellence.

In this session, Jina will share why it’s important to create a design quality criteria and give an example from their recent work. They’ll also share some insights into creating one so you can use this in your own organization!

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At Iress, 20 years of building software, not to mention many mergers and acquisitions, and lack of investment in design had led to different tech stacks, theming solutions, and sub-par look & feel and experiences.

Learn how the team aligned 20+ years of prehistoric baggage, operationalise design and use the power of a design system to bring an organisation's product experience into the 21st century?

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Thanks to the power of a progressive metrics approach, REA have recently hit a milestone of saving 300,000 hours of product design and development time via their design system, Construct Kit. It’s a really substantial return on investment for the business and a pivotal point in their four-year journey of building a next-generation design system.

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Discover the transformative power of design systems in this talk as we delve into gaining support for their creation and maintenance and involving key stakeholders. Get to understand the vital components - styles, colour, content, iconography, typography, and components - that make a robust design system a game-changer in product development and user experience.

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As the digital design space continues to evolve quickly around an environment of design processes that rapidly manufacture and output so much of what we experience in our day to day lives, the conveniences gained almost always overlook the amount of effort, energy, process and waste that goes into something as simple as the placement of a button. What can be learned from other systems and how can we design with consciousness around these inputs?

This talk is an observation and discussion around principles and elements of the Permaculture Design System and Digital Design Systems, looking into the overlaps, connections and interactions between design in the natural and technological worlds and ways of applying this thinking to more than the current applications. We'll cover ways of thinking about digital design from a Permaculture perspective, designing with more permanence and looking at digital design more holistically while also touching on Design System thinking applied to natural systems of elemental and atomic organisation.

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Many of the new WCAG 2.2 criteria have implications for designers – think graphics, focus states and interaction. Find out what it all means for your work as a designer.

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The websites we make are multi-dimensional objects: the size and shape of them change with every device and browser they are viewed on.

We have lots of tooling to develop layouts for this multi-dimensional form, but one crucial element seems to have resisted our attempts at tooling: our typography. How does our typography maintain meaningful structure while flexing to this dynamic space?

In this talk, we’ll explore that problem. We will make a map of how text and typography behave on the web, and then take these maps and apply them using CSS animations.

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Building accessibility into design systems from the beginning is crucial but often seen as too complicated.

Within this session, we'll explore methods with design, tooling, and user research to show how you can build an inclusive design system from the beginning.

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The Agriculture Design System (AgDS) is the Design System built for the Australian Government Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry Export Service.

AgDS is based on the GOLD, the former Australian Government Design System which was decommissioned in 2021.

In this talk, Jordan will walk through how the Department of Agriculture took the design principles and visual language of GOLD to build a modern and accessible design system.

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Walking through the journey Octopus Deploy is going through investing in a design system and the surprising ways it is helping our organisation mature.

Looking at how we developed an understanding of "What is a pattern?" vs "What is a component?" and how it's leveling up our design quality and documentation chops.

Exploring our internal processes & cultural shift required to manage a component library and how our engineers are embracing and resisting our design system with a federated management model.

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Dive into the key architecture patterns:

- Microservices

- Containers & Kubernetes

- Serverless

- Cloud-Native Design

- Event-Driven Architecture

for effectively modernising legacy applications, with a focus on cost, performance, security, and scalability considerations.

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How exactly do hackers steal client side data, and what can you do about it?

By understanding JavaScript supply chain risks you can find ways to mitigate JavaScript style threats, including web skimming, formjacking, and Magecart attacks. By identifying vulnerable resources, detecting suspicious behavior, and blocking malicious activity, you'll minimize user data theft and content manipulation on websites.

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If you’ve been following the React Ecosystem and watching where full-stack frameworks like Next.js are headed, React Server Components are one of the most talked-about developments. They're generating a lot of excitement among developers, and are poised to change the way we build web apps.

Ultimately, React Server Components aim to improve your overall web app performance by moving the work of rendering to the server. In this talk, we'll explore what React Server Components are, how they differ from traditional server-side rendering (SSR), and how you can start using them in Next.js to improve the end-user experience.

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If you're using React, there's a good chance you've been writing functional components with hooks for a while now. And I think most of us would agree that hooks make our components cleaner and more elegant.

But hooks have a dark side: they can be confusing and make code more difficult to reason about.

And what's going on with the Rules of Hooks? Why can I only use hooks inside component functions? And why can't I call them conditionally?

To find out, we're going to have a look at how hooks work under the covers. We can then use this information to better understand what's going on in the hooks we use and help us to write our own custom hooks.

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You can go a long time as a JavaScript developer without ever feeling the need for generators.

So it’s natural to wonder: What are they good for? Why would you ever need one? What’s the point?

But generators can do some neat tricks. And they may even change the way you approach certain problems.

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Reduce, Reuse, Recycle is a mantra most folks are familiar with.

When it comes to web development, SImon preaches a slightly different mantra:

Reduce: the amount of JavaScript required to build your HTML Reuse: what the platform already provides Offload: expensive or time-consuming tasks to web workers

Attendees of this talk will learn why it is important to rely on something other than JavaScript being available and how to start from a working base, how to re-use new platform features to reduce their JS footprint, and finally, how to use web workers and other platform features to prevent the main thread of the browser from begin blocked.

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It feels parallel, but is actually sequential.

There's a common misconception that multiple things are happening simultaneously in JavaScript when you're learning it for the first time.

This talk aims to correct that misconception by exploring what parallelism really means, and shedding light on JavaScript being a concurrent language that only ever handles events sequentially. The mechanism that it uses to do this efficiently is the event loop, which I will explain with a cute simulation of my cat!

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Forms. How do they work? What secrets do they hold?

I don't know. What I do know is type-safe forms are the best forms! I'm a stickler for type-safety, and will write whatever code necessary to make as many errors as possible surface at compile time.

I'll be demonstrating my favourite way to build component libraries with TypeScript and React Hook Form, so that you never have to worry about forms again!

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Web performance plays a crucial role in ensuring inclusivity for all users, including those with degraded internet connection and low-end devices. The revolutionary impact of JavaScript on web development is undeniable, but its usage demands careful consideration due to potential challenges it can pose to web performance. 

In this talk, we will discuss why Javascript can be a bottleneck when it is not used mindfully and how it can impact web performance adversely. We will also look into the strategies to mitigate these performance issues. Let's look at web performance through an accessibility lenses and discuss practices to make the Web truly World Wide.

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React server components and similar concepts in other frameworks are re-shaping how we think about server side rendering and how we build web applications.

Let's take a journey through history, how we evolved from building websites with PHP, HTML and CSS, through an era of jQuery and SPAS, to where we are now.

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Did you know TypeScript could do that?

There are a lot of built-in types in TypeScript that can come in very handy, but surprisingly a lot of developers spend years with the language without knowing them. Quite often these utilities can simplify your code A LOT, so, it really pays off to learn them!

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Microsoft is parallel journeys: our flagship applications are moving to the web, in whole or in part. At the same time, our internal stacks have been evolving, starting with in-house tools, through Angular, to React. This trajectory mirrors the larger frontend ecosystem's acceptance of SPA technologies, appropriate or not, over the past decade. The bad news is that none of this has gone well for users. But why? How did our community gain huge funding and put on an endless parade of self-congratulatory conferences if the results haven't stacked up?

This talk is a look into how Microsoft is beginning to turn a very large ship, and how lessons from a decade of consulting with teams building on the web can help you avoid the now-common pratfalls of an ecosystem that's only just starting to step into the stark sunlight of P&L accountability.

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Your stakeholders want to improve content quality, accuracy and accessibility, so they call on you to develop a (perhaps revised) content strategy, one that will solve these problems of a bloated product, inaccurate or out of date information, and confusing services.

But… can a content strategy actually do this?

Today, I present a bold argument: content strategy, as conventionally understood, falls short in actually improving products and services.

Instead, I show that the key to improved content lies solely in addressing content operations and governance, specifically by answering the crucial (and possibly a bit unsexy) question:

… who owns this content and what do they do with it?

Learn steps and tactics to understanding content operations, and how to solve some common operations problems, so that content owners can improve their own content.

Tori will share real-world examples that showcase the transformative power of effective content governance. These examples and tactics include a global content operations project at the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, large scale content management for key government services, rapid multilingual publishing in the COVID19 crisis, and more.

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Does your organisation understand your customers' end-to-end experience, and is there alignment in that understanding? Are siloed teams, lack of journey understanding, or inconsistencies throughout the experience hindering your content strategy efforts?

Experience maps help align your teams around your customer and create a unified vision, shared framework and consistent language across your organisation. As a tool to power up your content strategy, these maps can serve as a foundation for defining content journeys, building taxonomies, designing consistent messaging, and efficient content operations.

This session will explore the ways experience maps enable this alignment, along with practical tips for creating one in your organisation.

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Content Designers are detectives. With content cases to crack. We push pass the press, lift the police tape and get to work. We’re there from the start: asking difficult questions, taking notes and chasing leads.

Learn how we Content Designers can empower ourselves to dig deeper than the veiled brief. To turn over stones, follow the money and find clues through accessibility, SEO, style guides, research, legal and marketing. And how to be proactive to gain buy-in – so we can use all our skills and do work we’re proud of.

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How can we achieve quality content at scale?

Sure, we need to look at the big picture. But the micro is as important as the macro and – Lorien Kaye will argue – actually enables it.

Based on discussions with clients and questions from content design students, this presentation gives examples of the kinds of nitty gritty content practices and processes people want – and need – to get on top of. Whether it’s how to make sure user needs are front of mind when people create content, or exactly what to include in a content production spreadsheet, Lorien will share ways to get on top of the small stuff so that the big stuff is more achievable.

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How can you wrangle influence, ambiguity, and autonomy to develop your career in content?

“Leadership.” “Leveling up.” It’s not always clear what these terms mean, or how they might manifest in your career. Or, it might feel like you have to change who you are or what you value to fit into some stereotypical mold.

To help you chart your path, we’ll examine three key skill areas to grow in: establishing influence, navigating ambiguity, and working autonomously.

And, most importantly, we’ll talk about how to build these skills while honoring what makes you, you.

You’ll leave this session knowing to identify and use practical, real-world methods to build and practice the skills of influence, ambiguity, and autonomy, as well as specific ways to demonstrate your skills that feel authentic and true to you.

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Complex content includes content with complicated concepts and ideas, detailed information and specialised language. It can be challenging to put onscreen, as it can include scientific notation, underlying data, linked citations, tables and figures.

What do you do with content that has all of this and more?

The answer has often been to just put a simple introduction online, and put the detail in a downloadable PDF. But making the effort to present complex content in an effective website can significantly benefit users, allowing them to easily access complex material, develop a deep understanding of information, follow complex processes, and find and analyse data.

What does embracing complexity look like for content developers and digital teams? As users increasingly look for all types of content to be available digitally, knowing how to make complex content effective will be a key skill. Using the Australian State of the Environment report as a case study, we show you how to work with complexity, plan for complex content at the start of a project, and collaborate with digital teams to ensure the final web product is navigable, accessible and interactive for all users.

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As content design has matured, we've moved beyond 'you're lucky to have a content designer', to a very real need to foster culture within content teams.

During content design interviews, the number one question is always, 'what's the culture like?' Hiring is competitive, and culture is Queen.

Beatrix currently manages a dispersed and async team, working on a diverse product suite. But we have shared values, fun meetings and unlock business value through information flow between product areas. But creating this situation takes shared ownership, intentional activity and constant evaluation. She'll share processes and frameworks that can help you create a community-forward team of content designers, who will help spread their ways of working out to other teams.

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Content strategies for large organisations can be challenging – with large numbers of webpages and users, combined with business needs and goals, there is a lot to consider.

Then you can add another layer of complexity when you consider user needs for people who aren’t fluent in English. Australia is one of the most multicultural countries in the world, and there are more than 100 different languages spoken and written in Australia. The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted what can happen when some communities can’t access or receive important health messaging. Getting the right message in the right format to multicultural communities is increasingly being recognised as a priority, and in-language content requires a strategic approach just like any other content

In this talk, we highlight how to consider culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) communities in a content strategy. How do CALD communities experience and use English-language websites? What’s a strategic approach to language selection? Is machine translation part of the solution? What can you do to ensure that everyone has access to your content?

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A human quality that can’t be replaced by AI is sensemaking – our ability to think analytically at the same time as making intuitive leaps.

McGee will explore how useful, purposeful and actionable content strategy requires us to take a step beyond just understanding, to sensemaking. And it’s not just making sense of our content – but of our organisations and our audiences. Giving examples from product content, an informational website, and an SEO focused site, you will learn a clear process for moving from no sense to purposeful content. You'll also get to see tools and processes that you can actually use in your work.

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AI-powered systems were previously the domain of developers and product makers. Now, generative tools like ChatGPT and Midjourney are accessible to anyone, opening up questions around algorithmic transparency for a new cohort of service providers, knowledge workers and content creators.

As content strategists, designers and researchers, there is a growing need for us to better understand the ethical implications of using these technologies – from how we work, to what we disclose, to questions around handling confidential information and intellectual property ownership.

In this session, we will take a closer look at AI explainability and why we, as content strategists and designers, need to know about it. How well do we need to understand AI-powered tools – and should this influence how we use them? How can we communicate to clients how we are using these tools in a way that is transparent, responsible and ethical? And are there ways we can educate clients so they understand these implications for their own work? How does existing guidance, such as Meta’s AI Explainability Framework, translate for content creators, consultants and service providers? Attendees will leave the session with a deeper understanding of AI explainability, with new ways of thinking about how it can influence and elevate their practice, and a better idea of how to create guardrails for using these tools.

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They gave you their email address. So now you fill it with “cheeky” sales letters and tedious promotional messages? What a waste.

Learn how some B2B companies are using their newsletters differently, to great result. They’re forging human connections that generative AI can’t match. Eliciting genuine feedback. Having an opinion. Here’s how.

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Design and development have traditionally been separate disciplines, but with the increasing complexity and demands of modern software, a new approach is needed. That’s why companies are starting to create hybrid roles, like design technologist or UX engineer, to be connectors between design and engineering. These new “hybrids” thrive on quickly going from concept to completion by creating well throughout hypotheses, exploring different ideas, and validating proof-of-concepts with users. But what are the specific steps we can take to promote the practice of design technology within our organization?

In this talk, the audience will learn:

• The meaning of design engineering and the key roles within them
• How design engineering can positively impact the product development process
• The four principles of design engineering

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Dear Designer, We don't want to make you cry. It's not our intention to butcher the beautiful work you've done, and we know that you've poured your soul into creating something that truly represents the client (or your company's) brand.

However... You are going to have to meet us halfway if you don't want us to cry either!

That means understanding what things you do that are going to make your development team get a little bit stabby, or worse still - destroy all of your hard work by 'improvising'.

Jo is here to share with you what she's learned from working on both sides of the design-development divide, and how we can make the internet a nicer place for everyone!

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“Death by a thousand cuts” is a common expression relating to microaggressions, subtle forms of discrimination that, whether intentional or not, add up to significant impact. These are commonly talked about in regards to everyday interactions in the workplace, education or family gatherings.

However, given how much of our time is spent using digital products, these are also everyday interactions that should be considered.

But it’s not all doom and gloom! Where there is the risk of microaggressions there is an opportunity for microaffirmations - small, meaningful acts of recognition and inclusion, like a font that enables special characters so your language can be represented accurately.

In this talk, we’ll dive into some examples of seemingly small design choices, patterns and elements that can add up to a heavy impact on our audiences. This isn’t an overview of accessibility or inclusive design, rather it’s an exploration of the effects of minute details in user interfaces and how we can embed awareness of these into our design practice.

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Learn the principles that will shape your ‘disability confidence’ and ‘disability competence’ for the rest of your life and equip you for co-design practice with anyone from a variety of diverse backgrounds or environments.

As designers, researchers or developers we are surrounded by advice to include people with disabilities and other under-represented people in our discovery, design and development processes. This can seem overwhelming with risks and complexities.

These principles provide a way to answer or provide practical advice for difficult questions, such as how do we approach people with disability, what to say and do, what to do if we say or do something wrong.

Interwoven together, the principles provide a fundamental and universal framework to make sense of all the information and advice we come across. You can use the principles to: evaluate the advice you’re given, identify gaps in advice or your current protocols, plan a strategy to address short, medium and long term goals to improve Inclusive practices and start to equip yourself to be ‘Inclusion confident’ and ‘Inclusion competent’ for the rest of your life.

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It’s rare to see a Designer in the CEO role. But what if this is actually a missed opportunity? What if the learnings and skills that we acquire as Designers are actually the perfect building blocks for business leadership – not just a seat at the table.

After a career spent building some of the most effective design teams in the world, Ross is now the CEO of one of Australia’s fastest growing startups: Kinde. He'll be sharing his thoughts on why Designers should consider launching their own business, and also look at roles at the executive level.

We’ll go deep on why the particular set of skills and tools that Designers have (from extreme empathy, to journey mapping and customer research) allow Designers to see the world a little bit differently, in ways that translate to massively transformative cultures and disruptive product visions.

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It's time to reimagine the traditional approach to branding and UX design.

By recognising the symbiotic relationship between the two, businesses can create a compelling narrative that resonates with users, fosters loyalty, and drives meaningful connections.

Attendees will leave with actionable insights and a fresh perspective on elevating their products and services through the fusion of brand and user experience.

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We are currently designing in a time of rapid adoption of ubiquitous features across the digital landscape, specifically the use of AI for personalisation in products.

MC and Phil will be showcasing the principles used in some of the products developed at the ABC, with regards to using AI for personalisation.

The bigger question is: As our worlds are getting busier, are we designing with enough time to understand the consequence?

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Get ready to tackle the universal challenges of handling design feedback head-on in this captivating session. Whether you find yourself on the receiving end of feedback or leading a team through iterative design processes, this talk equips you with practical strategies to navigate high-stakes situations with confidence.

Gain valuable insights into identifying quality feedback, seizing opportunities for improvement, and engaging in productive conversations.

With a wealth of experience in design and team leadership, Carolyn will unveil her personal strategies for staying composed, fostering collaboration, and leveraging feedback to achieve project success and foster stronger relationships.

Don't miss out on this transformative session that will elevate your approach to design feedback at any stage of your journey.

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At the ABC Innovation Lab, we test strategy in reality.

For the past couple of years we have been trying to separate the AI hype from what's practical and applicable now. Anna will share a series of successful pilots using AI in content production and distribution.

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Conversational AI teams need UX designers to create more intuitive, human-like interfaces that move beyond clunky chatbots.

UX talent can bring user empathy and research to rethink assumptions, ensure products match real needs, and design dynamic conversations, micro interfaces, and ephemeral apps.

Though trained in linear web design, UX designers who embrace new interaction paradigms could revolutionize how we communicate with AI. Just as TiVo's excellent user experience transformed TV watching, UX design can unlock conversational AI's true potential.

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In UI tools like Figma, digital designers can get stuck in a ‘visual-first’ way of thinking.

Learning how to annotate visual designs for non-visual and other less-apparent considerations is a vital and meaningful skill. Annotations not only help create a more inclusive and accessible end product, but they can help designers think through and critically reflect on accessibility throughout their process.

Claire and Sam will not only introduce designers to the ‘why’ and ‘how’ of annotating for accessibility, using their experience as accessibility consultants who’ve worked with all sizes of design team, they’ll take a critical and pragmatic look at how all designers and workflows can accommodate this skill.

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What happens to your work when you leave the room? What can you do to help others understand and use what you've designed?

It's not enough to do the work — we must also communicate about the work, and do that in writing. In this presentation by content strategist, writer and TEDx speaker Matt Fenwick, you'll learn a new way of approaching writing at work.

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