Going Mobile and Responsive Design

Submitted by joel on June 12, 2012 - 1:50pm

We all need to be thinking about taking our websites and creating a mobile optimized experience.

According to a recent Google study, 90% of people are now using their mobile devices to access web content. According to IDC, as of 2015 more people will be browsing the Web using mobile devices over desktops.

Where do you start?  See this blog post, a primer (it was written quite a while ago, yet it is still solid information) of things to think about to start planning.

We are creating mobile experiences for some of our clients and are about to begin a campaign to educate all of our clients on the WHYs and HOWs to go mobile. And as the cobbler's kids have the worst shoes, Fuse IQ's site will be one of our next projects. Our site is built using Drupal 6. We will be upgrading to Drupal 7 and porting to mobile in 2013. We are getting comfortable with this migrating and now want you all, whether you are a Drupal user or not, to have some good resources.

As luck would have it, today I came across these two articles that are well worth your time and that reflect our thinking here at Fuse IQ:

A Primer on Responsive Design : From Content to Development from UX Magazine

  • Responsive Design = the practice of creating digital experiences that adapt to seamlessly deliver content suited to the device context of the user’s operating system, screen size, or orientation
  • Create a smart content strategy: putting the right content in users’ hands according to the context of their interaction
  • Plan for a change management phase and gain stakeholder buy-in
  • Start with the smallest device, since this represents the smallest environment that you’ll design for
  • Focus on key-content
  • Communication between front-end and back-end development
  • Work in an agile environment where you are able to prototype and test
  • Responsive design introduces complexity and can therefore take longer than traditional design..but the payoff can be considerable!

Delivering the Right Mobile Experience with Drupal from Acquia

This page shows a couple presentations Acquia gave in May, 2012, and of course is Drupal-centric. It is worth going through the slides, especially #13: Implementation Considerations.

Acquia also brings up the question of whether to build a mobile app or optimize your site for mobile with some computing power. This is how we are approaching mobile out of the gate. Building an OS (iOS/Android/WinMob) can be expensive to build and maintain.

More to come, including infomration on Drupal 7 tools for mobile and the CiviCRM mobile initiative.