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Using responsive design? Re-visit user research questions for better results
Your design fitting on mobile screens doesn’t mean it fits mobile user needs.
Responsive Web Design is a fantastic tool that can solve resolution headaches, but with it comes a need to re-visit basic user research questions.
The best way to think about “Responsive Design” is like water: it will fit into whatever you pour it in. You don’t have to re-design your application in whatever resolutions your clients want: the design can adapt to whatever they need.
However, with this power comes the need to think about mobile needs: after all, all the information that fits nicely onto a desktop screen has a lot less screen size.
So it’s often best to go back to the basics and ask the same user research questions you would at the start of any project.
The strengths and weaknesses of responsive design
Responsive web design is fantastic at addressing one fundamental problem organizations face: they don’t have the resources to develop mobile and desktop designs for their websites.
Responsive design allows them to (mostly) translate the same ideas and content into a mobile experience, but stopping at this stage often isn’t enough.
After all, you have much less space to work with, and some functionality or ideas don’t translate well to mobile.
Companies tend to take two options when it comes to the mobile experience with responsive design:
- Companies try to replicate everything from the desktop to the mobile version, leading to messy (or very long scrolling) pages.
- Companies choose to offer a limited information/functionality subset of the website.
The second option is almost always the better approach, but one burning (and often contentious) question comes: what content do I not show on mobile?
