Caching, Payloads, and Other Dark Arts: Optimizing UX in Suboptimal Conditions
React Summit US
When your backend is untouchable but your frontend is falling apart—how do you fix the UX?
Caching, Payloads, and Other Dark Arts: Optimizing UX in Suboptimal Conditions
This talk breaks down real world data fetching challenges at scale and how to solve them with modern patterns like the BFF layer, granular payload shaping, prefetching, and critical versus optimal queries. We walk through progressively improving an architecture that starts with five parallel client side requests against a bloated API, then move the work to a proxy handler, and finally to a fully optimized TanStack Query setup with server prefetching and resilient fallbacks. All demos were recorded on a long haul flight using in flight WiFi, showing how these patterns behave under real latency, unstable bandwidth, and failure conditions. The goal is to prove that these techniques are not academic. They directly affect reliability, performance, and user experience in harsh environments where debugging, caching strategy, and payload discipline make or break your product.
What people said
Rajni Gediya
Staff Engineer | BLE • Mobile • Medical IoT | Speaker
Nov 22, 2025
I had the chance to meet Faris Aziz in person during the speaker photo session at #ReactSummitUS, and I’m so glad I did — what an incredible engineer and human. His talk, “Caching, Payloads, and Other Dark Arts: Optimizing UX in Suboptimal Conditions,” was honestly one of the most impressive 20-minute sessions I’ve ever seen. He delivered 5x content with perfect clarity, no confusion, and a beautifully structured walkthrough of the entire caching optimization process. The way he broke down caching strategies, payload handling, and real-world UX considerations — all with a clear example — was simply masterful. Faris is truly an engineer, an artist, a craftsman, and a speaker all at once. And beyond the technical brilliance, he brings a natural lightness and positive energy to the room. His humor and presence make complex topics easier to absorb — you walk away feeling both smarter and more energized. I also enjoyed listening to him during the “Growing to Senior and Tech Lead” discussion. His perspectives were honest, grounded, and incredibly valuable. Faris, you’re a fantastic engineer, collaborator, and storyteller. Thanks you 🙌
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