Is Your Responsive Design

Responsive Enough?

James Zetlen • Software Architect • Mozu Dane Downer • Cofounder/Vice-President • Brand Labs

The “One Size Fits All” Philosophy!

  Plato focused on perfect “forms”, meaning:

  Physical objects only resemble the ideal   The simplest definition is the correct one

  To Plato, humans were “featherless bipeds”

  Then…Diogenes threw a plucked chicken at

him!

Chicken Thrower

Responsive Development!Problems!

  Responsive development should be about responding to users’ needs

  Not simply “mobile readiness”

  Responsive is a specific style

  Your project / users might require a

different approach

Purpose-Driven Web Philosophy!

  What are your goals? Assess. Then adopt.   Responsive is only ONE tool. Consider:

 Progressive Enhancement

 Graceful Degradation

 Adaptive Design

 Predictive Development: using a build process, one set of assets becomes many

What is Predictive!Development?!

  Avoids the poor performance of carelessly developed responsive sites

  Provides faster load times to billions of

people with slow broadband access   It’s developer-friendly!

  Just as convenient, quick and "

elegant as responsive

When Responsive Works Best!

  Content is more important than interactions

  Interactions present, but secondary

  Spatial relationships are few and consistent

  Client begins with a mobile vision

  Long-form writing, presentations, galleries, portfolios

Content First means Responsive!

When Predictive Works Better!

  “Web app”, not web site!

  Complex interactions!

  Spatial relationships are important!!  Image-focused site, or site with other heavy assets !

  Large navigation hierarchy!

Interactions First means Predictive!

Different Strokes!

  The Future-Friendly Web needs all we’ve got

  Even powerful techniques don’t work for all   Opposing philosophies can work together

  Purpose-driven Web philosophyuses many schools of thought, just like us.

“All the good are friends of one another.” – Zeno of Citium

THANK YOU!