Mobile design has come a long way. It all started with
native apps, then came an era of hybrid apps, then designers went crazy for mobile
web (creation of mobile version of websites).
Lately, designers and developers are beating the drum for “Responsive
Design.”
At least for now, responsive design appears to be a silver
bullet to address all the design issues pertaining to various screen sizes – it
is very promising. Responsive design works on the philosophy of: “design once
and for all.” Meaning, there is no need to maintain multiple sites, which helps
decreasing the development costs. The site – with a single url – renders itself
differently on different devices by analyzing the query type using flexible
grids, layouts.
So, is responsive design truly the solution to all problems?
Most of the posts and blogs indicate that it really depends on user’s context
than anything else. Some companies are creating a mash-up of both mobile and regular
sites.
eSurance realized that their mobile users had different
content needs than desktop users. For example, the mobile users needed contact
and policy information handy in case of an accident. On the other hand, desktop
users don’t really care for this kind of information. Therefore, they had to
create two different sites. Responsive design didn't work for them.
In conclusion, there is no shortcut to identify whether a
responsive site or two different sites – one for desktop and one for mobile
users – are required. Therefore, as designers it’s our prerogative to go hard
on user research to identify correct user scenarios and design accordingly.
