I had never heard of “responsive design” until one of my classmates mentioned it several weeks ago. As I was dithering over which session to attend – SEO? Controlling my online presence? — at the last minute I decided to follow another classmate into responsive design, the topic I knew the least out of the three.
I was glad I did. Although I quibbled over some of the things Erik Fadiman said, overall I found it very instructive and informative, especially as someone who is just learning web coding for real. While smartphones and smartphone apps are all the rage, I get the impression that any given company’s traffic from smartphones is overwhelming small (I’m going to use the Atlantic here as an example, although I gladly understand this may not be representative in the least) yet I understand that in order to be both efficient and cutting edge, a designer must design for both current devices and possible future properties.
Some of the takeaways: Design for appropriate contexts, but focus overall on three core principles: semantic markup and content strategy (separate from the design); separation of presentation and content; and progressive enhancement, so that the content works in the most basic of levels (a narrow smartphone) and then becomes “prettier,” or functioning is enhanced, as the device moves up the hierarchy (to a desktop, for example). Sometimes I get the impression that people are so crazed about tablets and smartphones that they forget that large numbers of people – especially non-techie-oriented ones – don’t use these devices and may not be so quick to get them. These guys still access the web through traditional means – computers. So it’s important that while designers and coders think about optimizing for the iPhone audience (and I hope they don’t forget that over 50% of smartphone users use Android), there are plenty of people who still want a functional, cool website they can view on yes, Internet Explorer.
I liked seeing how Fadiman organized his workflow, and he touched briefly on how integrating responsive design principles can be incorporated in a larger organization, and how to explain it to clients. We could also download his code, which as a beginning coder I can totally get behind.
I was grateful for the opportunity to attend Converge South. It definitely gave me a lot to Google.