Drawing of a person standing in field with a barn, a cow, and crops in the background. They’re holding a phone and chewing on a sprig. They are wearing overall with underwear being worn outside of the overalls.

I’d sell the farm for a good user experience

Why responsive design is so much more than a good bet

3 min readOct 31, 2022

This article is day 31 of a 31 day series. A mash-up of the Inktober 2022 prompt list and UX terminology. Read more about the challenge here.

Day 31 | Inktober prompt: Farm | UX Term: Responsive

But first can I say something?

Okay, here we go. Day 31 of Inktober by User Experience (IXUX). The final day in this series, and it’s bittersweet. Maybe it’s the dark chocolate halloween candy, or maybe it’s closing out the series with a term that, to be honest, seems almost dated. Now before you get mad, hear me out.

What is responsive design?

Back in 2010, Ethan Marcotte, a web designer/developer posted an article called “Responsive Web Design” which is credited with sparking the movement toward a “mobile-first” approach to design. According to Statista, at the time about 20% of the population was using smartphones. But then, just over a decade later in 2021 we were sitting at about 73%. And I feel it’s become more than a “mobile-first” approach and almost just a “mobile” approach to design. It’s like telling someone to put their underwear on first, before their overalls. Do you really have to say it?

But just in case someone out there is now removing their underwear from over top of their overalls, responsive design is a focus on ensuring that the design is created in such a way that it can be consumed just as easily on a mobile device as it can be on a personal computer. While at one time we focused more on different monitor sizes and resolutions, and always attempted to provide designs that met the common denominator, we now have mobile phones of varying sizes from minis, to phablets, and then oh yeah, also tablets and laptops, and people using monitors, or tv screens, and don’t forget watches, the list goes on.

So while “mobile-first” might not have the same shimmer that it did at first, “responsive” is not going anywhere, it’s just becoming a norm, rather than an elite or next level approach.

Why is it important to UX?

In user experience, the first order of business is understanding the space that we’re working in. Not only the user, though that is super important, but we need to have details about the industry that they’re operating in, and we need a sense of how they will interact with the product and consume the content that is shared through it. We don’t ever want to make assumptions, unless we’re planning to test for them. And we don’t want to make decisions for users. We want to ask and have them tell us.

We are often tasked with creating a user experience with specific requirements already in mind. When building an app, we have an understanding that it will be for mobile devices. When updating a website, we more times than not are responding to a poor mobile experience. And we have to continue to be flexible, to be responsive.

Takeaway

Responsive design is not a new concept. The UX approach to responsive design is all about finding new ways to make user experience better by designing for responsiveness by default. Take advantage of the tools that are already available, and approach each project with a mindset that is tuned in to responsiveness from the word “go”. Responsiveness will continue to be a need as long as we’re still using screens to consume information. Which who knows, maybe #farmlife will start trending and we’ll all get rid of our devices. Crazier things have happened. So just in case, remember, underwear first, then overalls.