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Matt Seccafien

Matt Seccafien

In the 20 years since studying in my homeland of Canada, I've held a variety of professional roles, starting out in traditional print, typography and information design, to site resiliency engineering, to open-source React framework development, and I'm currently interested in design system operations. I value creativity and autonomy in both life and work, and thrive when I am invested in the whole idea rather than any single facet. When not at my computer I can be found running around Tempelhofer Feld in Berlin, at the kino or hanging out with my partner Fiona and our cat Otto.
DeepL, Germanycartogram.cacartogrammattseccafien
Your UI Is Not My UI
React Advanced 2026React Advanced 2026
Upcoming
Your UI Is Not My UI
After six interviews with people with disabilities about their daily struggles and opportunities they see in AI, it became clear that while standards and patterns have brought accessibility far, there are hard limits on how well one interface can adapt for all users.This led us to a different approach: instantly generated UI based on personal needs and context. Not adapting one interface, but exploring what AI makes possible when launching an app takes the same time as creating one on-the-fly.
accessibility
Design Systems and UI in a Bi-directional World
React Summit US 2025React Summit US 2025
19 min
Design Systems and UI in a Bi-directional World
When DeepL added Arabic—its first RTL language—it wasn’t just a styling problem, it was a design systems challenge. This talk will go deep on logical CSS, platform-agnostic icon mirroring and automation, soft enforcement strategies for design consistency, and how to wield influence across hundreds of engineers with minimal headcount. This isn’t a story about building components—it’s about wiring them together at scale, with smart defaults, localization and directional and empathy.
design systems
The Forest for the (Abstract Syntax) Trees
React Advanced 2021React Advanced 2021
8 min
The Forest for the (Abstract Syntax) Trees
Call it "kickstarting", "scaffolding", "bootstrapping" or simply "typing words in a terminal and getting files to start with", this is often the first opportunity for a framework to either delight or disappoint developers. How easily can they get up and running, can they extend it with their ideal toolchain and how well will it scale? In this talk we'll explore the limitations of current solutions and examine the ways we set out to improve the developer onboarding experience of Shopify's new Hydrogen React framework and SDK.
developer experiencehydrogen
Build a Custom Storefront on Shopify with Hydrogen
React Advanced 2021React Advanced 2021
170 min
Build a Custom Storefront on Shopify with Hydrogen
Workshop
Hydrogen is an opinionated React framework and SDK for building fast, custom storefronts powered Shopify. Hydrogen embraces React Server Components and makes use of Vite and Tailwind CSS. In this workshop participants will get a first look at Hydrogen, learn how and when to use it, all while building a fully functional custom storefront with the Hydrogen team themselves.
e-commercereact server componentshydrogenshopify with react