Not many people know that I used to be a web designer.
It was a side hustle, around 15 or so years ago, just as “responsive design” was starting to be dicsussed.
What’s responsive design?
Well, before responsive design, we use to build websites for computer screens.
These were a pretty standard size, regardless of manufacturer.
In the mid-2000’s, if you accessed a website on your mobile phone (which was still quite a new thing), you would see the desktop version – but really small.
Responsive web design was about creating a framework that allowed the website, its elements and content to “flex” to suit the device and, today, you can see that a web experience of a site will likely be different on a desktop versus a mobile device.
Developers actually design for mobile devices FIRST.
This is partly because designing for desktop is a little bit simpler and partly because that’s how most web traffic to sites is now consumed.
“But, Danny”, I hear you say.
“You always talk about culture and engagement. What’s this got to do with web design?”
Well. All businesses – every single one of them – are people businesses.
Yet we still often design with a desktop-first mindset.
🐝More employees are remote or hybrid. Yet we design for office-first
🐝More customers are accessing services on-the-move. Yet we design experiences that take time to complete or require in-person interaction
🐝More customers and employees are choosing a different organisation, if it’s not designed with them in mind first
Responsive design was about identifying what the future of great web experiences was like, then building around that approach – even if it felt a bit alien at the time.
Today’s engagement design is the same.
