Building a Better Web
June 11–12, 2018: Training
June 12–14, 2018: Tutorials & Conference
San Jose, CA

Meaningful UX performance metrics and how to improve them

Mark Zeman (SpeedCurve)
4:25pm–5:05pm Thursday, June 14, 2018
Performance and UX
Location: 210 A/E
Secondary topics:  Best practice, High-level, Web Pillars Track: Performance, Security, Accessibility
Average rating: *****
(5.00, 4 ratings)

Who is this presentation for?

  • Frontend developers and UX designers

Prerequisite knowledge

  • A working knowledge of performance monitoring tools and the metrics they provide

What you'll learn

  • Understand what different performance metrics actual measure
  • Learn a strategy for picking the best performance metric for your site
  • Explore advanced techniques for improving the rendering and UX of websites

Description

Users don’t care how your website is built, what backend you’re running, or if you’re using the coolest JavaScript framework on the block. They only care about content. That content has to be meaningful, and it has to be rendered in the browser lightning fast, or you’ve lost them.

Performance metrics are critical for understanding the impact of our work as web developers on improving our user experience and making it a joy to use. But not all performance metrics do a great job of representing what our users actual see and experience. Network metrics have been around for decades, but rendering metrics are newer, and they’re doing a better job of capturing the moment critical content is visible.

Mark Zeman offers an overview of available rendering metrics, including newcomers like Time to Interactive and Time to First Meaningful Paint, and helps you pick the right metrics to focus on for your website and your users. Along the way, Mark outlines several techniques for improving the rendering experience of your websites, including delivering your brand in the first request, building a skeleton screen of elements, image SVG placeholders, and progressing rendering. You’ll leave armed with performance metrics and rendering techniques that will help you best improve your user experience.

Photo of Mark Zeman

Mark Zeman

SpeedCurve

Mark Zeman is the founder of SpeedCurve, a frontend performance monitoring service that gives you continuous feedback on how your frontend code is affecting the performance of your website. Mark comes from a design background but has always been just as passionate about the code. He is based by the ocean in beautiful New Zealand and has spent 20 years crafting websites and mobile apps.

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Comments

Picture of Mark Zeman
Mark Zeman | FOUNDER
06/18/2018 9:48am PDT
Eliazer Braun | FRONT END LEAD
06/18/2018 1:28am PDT

Great talk!
Can you please share the slides?