Armed with a Puck.js button and a bluetooth-powered power outlet, Chris Castle decided to make the Christmas lights magic. He dug into the code, Puck.js documentation, and seemingly oft-ignored specifications, eventually reverse engineering the whole thing. He built a site around it, showing how it worked, while learning more about design, SVG animation, and the occasional perils of the tools we choose to use.

All so his nephew could press a button and see some magic happen.

Joined by Heroku UX / UI lead Charlie Gleason, Chris delves into the project; digging into his rationale and process, the technical challenges he faced, and how kids are really great at user testing. Most of all, together they try and find a little of joy that can only be captured by kids at Christmas.

Links from this episode

• Puck.js
• Bluetooth power outlet
• xkcd comic on standards
• Wireshark
• Slides for Keg dot io
• Sandpit.js and its terrible documentation
• Lynn Fisher
• Refactoring UI
• https://castle.christmas