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Fall of the Designer Part III: Conformist Responsive Design(elischiff.com)
8 years ago from Ivan Bozic, Founder @ arsfutura.com
Mike Bulajewski, 8 years ago
IMO design is more than the transmission of information.
Ben MJT, 8 years ago (edited 8 years ago )
Ok. That aside, i'm still struggling with the idea that RWD is some kind of fad that is anti-design in some way. Do you have much experience with it/have worked on a responsive site yourself? It is not a new idea by any means: http://alistapart.com/article/dao.
The web is primarily about communication, and designing responsively allows us to make the same information more accessible to more people on more devices, all with one site. That sounds like good design to me.
And your point about money confuses me a bit too. Design exists in the real world, under real world constraints. Saving time, money and resources where possible are valid, if not integral, parts of what equates to a successful design. This seems like a design axiom to me.
Yes, I'm familiar with responsive design, I have designed and coded responsive websites, and I have nothing against media queries, etc. as such. My problem is with the kinds of arguments that are made in favor of responsive design. I especially don't trust essays like the one you linked which rely on attacking designers' supposed immorality or character flaws instead of making the case for their preferred approach on its merits. There's quite a lot of this kind of very poor writing about design that relies on berating designers for failing to submit to business and technical constraints.
You say that giving people the same information on all their devices is good design, but that's not always true. My blog is responsive, because it's true for that particular problem. Does it hold for an ecommerce site where mobile users are comparison shopping in a physical store? Does it hold for a music streaming service where mobile users are on the bus? Does it hold for a hotel website where mobile users are checking in? It might be true. Or it might not. But you can't just assume that it is.
You're right that saving time, money and resources is important. It's also true that the most cost efficient website is no website. There are plenty of ways to save costs that also eliminate the value, so discussions about cost reduction without an understanding of value are not useful. And what's your time horizon for assessing value? Is it quarterly, or longer term? What are you going to do with the savings? It only makes sense if you can put those resources towards other, more valuable opportunities. Are you a startup? A retailer? An agency? A government? That makes a difference in terms of how and why to save costs.
Responsive design makes perfect sense in some situations, but some people treat it like the One True Way, and don't realize they're actually making a bunch of design and business decisions.
[Sorry for the ridiculous delay, I went on holiday in the middle of writing this and completely forgot about it.]
There's quite a lot of this kind of very poor writing about
Forgive me for invoking the arugmentum ad populum, but a lot of people regard that article as a landmark piece of writing about the web. Maybe worth a re-read? (http://alistapart.com/blog/post/15-years-of-dao/)
It's also true that the most cost efficient website is no website.
Of course, maybe I should have put a caveat that I meant savings made within the confines of the functionality we set out to achieve. e.g Building a site/app to sell X.
Design does not exist in a vacuum, and we can’t continue to plug away indulgently for the sake of Design, with a capital D.
Does it hold for an ecommerce site where mobile users are comparison shopping in a physical store? Does it hold for a music streaming service where mobile users are on the bus? Does it hold for a hotel website where mobile users are checking in?
I would argue that these kinds of decisions are all part of the development process, (similar concerns are brought up in Luke Wroblewski's book 'Mobile First'). Responsive doesn't just mean rejigging the page, and if research suggested particular customer habits/desires, then these could be accommodated.
In any case, none of those things are served by a static site, and building specific apps for each could get very expensive/would be awkward for users. RWD can strike a nice middle ground.
Responsive design makes perfect sense in some situations, but some people treat it like the One True Way, and don't realize they're actually making a bunch of design and business decisions.
I certainly agree that it's something that should be used on a case by case basis, but I'd argue in the majority of cases it does provide a net benefit. With an increasingly varied device landscape, unless the data was absolutely clear (e.g. 99% desktop access) then we are arbitrarily choosing a single screen to design for, the share of which could easily change in the future; something that designing device-agnostically avoids.
I'm intrigued, what's your alternative to responsive design? Making a site for every device or just picking one view and sticking with it? I can understand not appreciating a style like 'flat' design, but this is a technical thing.
And surely all design is about money at the end of the day, you can't spend a lifetime working on a design just because it's potentially 'better'. Creating something with less resources that does gets the information to the user sounds like good design to me.