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What some other web users think…
(From the Nielsen Norman Group)
“What Designers Still Need to Learn
So, if RWD (responsive web design) has helped improve mobile usability, does that mean that responsive sites are more usable on mobile? Not necessarily. RWD has made content prioritization and content parity part of the conversation, and overall, mobile design has benefitted. But RWD has also had negative impacts on mobile usability, perhaps the most important being that of the super-long page. Designers were told that the fold doesn’t matter, because, since the screen is so tiny on mobile, what else can users do but scroll? And yes, they scroll, but only if they are enticed to.“
“What It Means for Desktop Users
Unfortunately I could write pretty much the opposite article about the influence of responsive design on the usability of desktop sites. The idea of starting RWD by designing for mobile has been great for mobile, but quite catastrophic for the desktop. We’ve lately seen on the desktop long pages devoid of information, hidden navigation and search, as well as big images and a poorly understood concept of prioritizing the content over chrome. Unfortunately we cannot design with only one device in mind when users are distributed across multiple platforms: we need to take into account the specifics and the strengths of each device and tweak our designs so they match the capacity of the communication channel with that device.”
The article above is based on…
“our (NNG) findings from 15 series of usability studies with users in 6 countries (mostly in the USA, but also in Australia, Hong Kong, The Netherlands, Romania, and the UK). It presents a set of design recommendations intended to help designers create a good mobile user experience.”
Perhaps we will be entering into an era where the first design brief questions to be asked will be:
- Are we designing this home page for desktop/tablet users or mobile phone users?
- What pages are primarily for mobile phone users?
Regs,
JohnW
And yes, they scroll, but only if they are enticed to.
I think that is an important quote.
Design is all about enticing people to do something.
P.S That article is almost impossible to read on a mobile – they might want to take their own advice.