With great power comes great (development) responsibility

Last year Sally Jenkinson spent some wonderful words about From the Front, and we are grateful to her for those, but not as close as how grateful we are to her for being there. Her presence both as a speaker and as a person to the conference was invaluable.

"Sally's talk starts from the idea that technology is experience.
Under this light responsive design can be seen as technology and design working hand in hand to make life better and responding to situations.
That's an empowering and wonderful vision!
Even developers are in charge of user experience, and the problem is that often we do not recognise how true it is and what is the responsibility that comes with it.
While is easy to be lured by the new shiny, and fancy possibilities browsers, devices and languages offer to enhance our websites, Sally advised us not to use technology for technology sake, especially if that results in excluding part of our audience from accessing our websites.
At the same time, we ought to remember that, above getting the work done, it is up to us to recognise the opportunity for enhancements, and shall we not miss those opportunities!"
Matteo

"Hard to summarise an inspiring talk like Sally's.
There a few sentences that are echoing in my head since I first heard them and that I found very useful sharing with the teams I work with. (my head might have rewritten some of them).
You should use technology to improve User Experience, don't use technology for technology's sake!
Don't let technology drive your UX strategy, but think outside the box, aim 'higher' and use technology for users' advantage.
We should be shifting our thinking in how we make our builds and how we prioritise.
Being a good developer is good... being aware of it, makes it even better.
The choices that we make shouldn't be based around getting the job done and meeting immediate project needs but we should also be thinking a bit bigger than that, and beyond ourselves."
Fabio