Many responsive designs, in my experience, don’t get this right. You are planning to offer up a different user experience to the desktop version, in the hope that whatever you end up producing is immediately easier for the end user, compared to what they are used to. In this context, I consider responsive design to be rolling the dice. But this is not possible with every user - you cannot cater to everyone. The only way to turn this situation into a positive is to offer up exactly what the enduser want with the responsive design. The very fact that I am seeing something different to what I am used to has already served to defeat my expectation - I don’t think that point can be argued against. This is my primary intended definition of defeating user expectation. The key navigational elements are not where they were, and perhaps one or more have even disappeared. One of the biggest bugbears I have with responsive design relates to when I am used to a particular desktop design, only to find that the responsive design is completely different. Perhaps I did not make my intended point clear enough originally, so I will try again. Having read through them all, I would like to take the opportunity to visit my original points, and reiterate and build upon (or deconstruct) them. A mixture of agreement and disagreement, with qualifications.Complete disagreement with all of my arguments.They have broadened my horizons and enabled me to consider the arguments for and against responsive design in more detail.īroadly speaking, the comments could be divided into three broad categories: I have had the privilege of reading a host of well-considered opinions in the comments section of the original article. Revisiting My Reasons for Why Responsive Design is Not Worth It It was fun trying to refute most of it.įor everyone with that kind of healthy attitude towards this issue, I welcome you. It’s good to hear stuff from the other side of the aisle on this topic. Pete Klein got what I was aiming for when he commented on the original article: If designers operate within an insular world in which they don’t ever step outside of their comfort zone to assess the needs of endusers, what hope do we have? Having said that, I had one web designer refuse to debate responsive design with me on the grounds that he doesn’t discuss design with non-designers. I do not intend to make enemies with that statement, because I know plenty of people within the design community who are extremely thoughtful and conscientious regarding all facets of design. However, that’s exactly what we are discussing here - the practical implementation of responsive design - not the concept itself.įurthermore, I wanted to highlight the arrogance and ignorance amongst certain members of the design community. What matters to me is how responsive design, in its current incarnation and implementation, benefits the end user.Ī popular argument against any responsive design critique is, “But that’s an example of poor responsive design”. I do not mean to refer to responsive design as an abstract concept, because that is of little use to our current experience of it. But in my opinion, that is not the issue at hand. I would consider the concept (on the whole) to be sound, and useful under the right circumstances.
As such, when I refer to responsive design, I am referring to its practical implementation in the real world - not the actual core concept. Poor concepts can be implemented well, and great concepts can be implemented shoddily.
Is responsive design still not worth it? Important Distinctions to Bear in Mind So - several months, tens of thousands of page views, and nearly 150 comments later, I thought it would be pertinent to revisit the debate. Whilst one might argue this is because responsive design is simply awesome, and has literally no shortcomings, my own personal opinion didn’t match up with this. You don’t have to search Google for long to find a pro-responsive design article, but articles that are critical of responsive design are rare beasts.
#Responsive site designer discussion update
UPDATE (March 2018): Some of the comments are not taking into consideration that the market has greatly changed since 2012, and responsive today is practically mandatory.
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