A digital agency gives a candid history of its development experience with responsive web design, outlining the problems and solutions it's developers faced and how it changed it's approach

1. 1
What have we
learnt about
Responsive
Web Design?
Our two year journey of discovery into responsive web design suggests it’s not
as simple as making a website fit into a mobile device; in this presentation we’ll
take you a little further into the future...

2. We don’t want an app,
We want a responsive web site!
Clients have realised they don’t need an app to be visible in the
mobile space - but they are now being bombarded by new phrases, buzzwords
and terminology

3. Responsive / Adaptive / Mobile first /Mobile optimised
With so many new terms, it’s no wonder people are confused
After much research, we were convinced that a responsive site required
all aspects of the design to fit into a browser, whatever its size or shape
Therefore we would adjust the browser width to set new CSS rules every time
the design broke

4. We were starting
to understand this
So: make the website fit various sizes, make the images and videos scale
proportionally, adjust the behaviour of some plug-ins - and away we go!
Our initial aim was to make a responsive site for IE6 with the help of a few
additional plug-ins

5. Developer test tools,
client test tools
We even built a breakpoint analyser to help our developers set media query
values
We rolled it out to clients so they could use it in lieu of having
a range of test devices

6. It even works in IE6
This culminated in us building the most complex responsive
site we’ve ever built
It has a responsive mega menu, responsive layout, images, video,
accordions, EVERYTHING is responsive
Surely THIS was responsive?

7. It even works in IE6
As we discovered, there is more to this than meets the eye...

8. Massive overheads
for testing
We discovered that maintenance and development took a lot of testing time

9. It took too long,
and cost too much
A five minute amend was taking over an hour, which we estimated was a
30% impact to costs and timelines...
This wasn’t what we saw for the future of mobile web
We decided to rethink our position and fundamentally re-evaluate what
responsive web design was

10. Responsive analysed
We analysed what responsive meant and narrowed it down to two factors that
defined the core user experience:
- mobile hardware, software and its supporting infrastructure
- user needs for content delivery within a contextual environment
We realised that a true responsive user experience is almost
impossible to deliver with the current network infrastructure and
mobile device software, both in terms of OS and browsers

11. Standard v Retina
We chose images to illustrate why we think
true responsive is not currently possible
Images are usually the largest page asset
Developers detect device capability
and show images based on that
Can’t detect 2/3/4G Wifi of LAN
Can’t assess quality of bandwidth

12. Standard v Retina
Do we show retina and punish
data caps / ignore retina displays?
Apple cache limit is 100k, used to be 25k,
this makes a bad situation worse
Alternative solution: deliver basic then
enhanced site depending on data rate
Internet history tells us that poor
experience leads to loss of conversion

13. Does your website
know i’m late?
Contextual awareness illustrates the ability of the website
to interact with the device and its surroundings
Does the website interact with the calendar, GPS and time to show a
customised view of the webpage? Will you get to your interview on time?
To accomplish this requires several apps to be open at the same time.
A responsive page would auto configure to your time and situation and display a
call button for the person you are to meet overlaid on a map showing directions
and approximate time of arrival

14. “It is dangerous to be right
in matters on which the
established authorities
are wrong”
- Voltaire
Understanding what responsive should be, we realised that
we and the industry had been doing adaptive all along
However, most developers, competitors and online tutorials show
a website in the obligatory desktop, tablet and phone mock-up
and call this responsive...

15. “It is dangerous to be right
in matters on which the
established authorities
are wrong”
- Voltaire
...we believe this is an industry mistake

16. So what did we do about it?
Knowing that delivering responsive images was fraught with difficulty we
decided to stick with standard def images; it’s easier on people’s data caps.
A website that changes its appearance based on screen size isn’t
responding to anything other than size, which is a faulty way to deliver
a mobile experience as the screen resolution and pixel density of nearly
every modern mobile device is equal if not better than most desktop systems

17. Desktop = Tablet
Overwhelming industry research states that tablets are primarily
used at home and have comparable screen resolutions to desktops
We decided that a tablet specific design held no additional value
and decided that a tablet should show the exact same website as
the desktop, regardless of orientation

18. Desktop = Phone
Our own user research indicates that the primary mobile orientation
for website usage is portrait
Taking into account screen sizes and pixel sizes it became clear
that the only consideration we needed to make after the primary
design was that of mobile in portrait

19. What we stopped doing
Stretching a browser width backwards and forwards and gaping
in awe as the layout changes is not something a user does,
it's what developers do
This is not a mobile experience, mobile browsers are full screen,
you can't stretch them

20. What we stopped doing
If clients wanted to see things stretch and fit into a variable sized
window on our desktop we would have been using fluid layouts
for the last decade
The fact that we have almost exclusively used fixed layouts tells us that
if a window is too small for the website, the user will adjust the window

21. Test on real devices
Allowing the client to adjust the width of the desktop browser
to see the mobile site is a false belief in the mobile solution...
...they are still sat down, using a low density very large monitor with a
mouse and keyboard, everything you don't do or use with a mobile

22. Test on real devices
We stopped showing mobile solutions on a desktop and persuaded
our clients to test the mobile solution on a mobile device
This allowed them to answer questions such as:
• is the menu button too small?
• does it take too long to scroll the page with a thumb/finger?
• is the text the right size?
• is the mobile menu correct?
None of these can be answered correctly on a desktop

23. So what have
we learnt about
Responsive
Web Design?
• True responsive is currently impossible under current
infrastructure and software constraints
• A picture of a website in 3 device formats is not a mobile solution
• Fluid layouts activated at certain screen widths does not
accurately give a true representation of the mobile solution

24. So what have
we learnt about
Responsive
Web Design?
• Retina images can be costly to user experience and the
financial limits on users data allowance
• Adaptive solutions ARE more complex, requiring additional
development & testing, however the impact can be minimised
with an approach based on user research and experienced
processes

25. So what have
we learnt about
Responsive
Web Design?
• Performing mobile testing on mobile devices will accurately judge
if the solution is fit for purpose
• Tablet design is the same as desktop design
• Mobile is primarily held in portrait orientation and mobile solutions
should accommodate this

26. And finally...
Mobile solutions are still evolving, and as a result of our thorough due diligence
and project processes, we have discounted many of them. We continue to
analyse research the latest innovations to ensure the best solutions for our
clients.