We could spout all kinds of statistics about why it should be – like nearly 70% of Americans own a smartphone, and 45% own tablets. And 71% of Americans use two or more screens daily to view content. But we thought you’d like to hear it direct from the experts themselves – so we asked our developers what goes into mobile design. Here’s what they said.
Dave Schuette: “I’m not going to bother looking it up, but I’m pretty sure there are more smartphones than burritos in the United States. Websites look terrible on burritos.”
Kaitlin Hamilton: “It’s 2016, everyone is always on their phones; if you are not designing websites to work on mobile, then you are missing out on a huge audience.”
Dave: “It forces you to reduce your design to the most essential elements. I enjoy the challenge.”
Jason Geiger: “Knowing that pretty much every site you design is going to be viewed on multiple platforms and trying to figure out how to execute each design best – it forces us to distill the website down to only the necessary elements.”
Kaitlin: “Having to remember that some of the elements will change/not work the same way as they do on desktop.”
Dave: “Forcing users to download an app instead of just putting the content on the mobile website.”
Dave: “Augmented reality. It accesses the camera on your phone and overlays information over it.”
Dave: “You can also use your phone to speak to other people.”
Kaitlin: “Hand sanitizer helps remove permanent marker from clothing (nothing to do with web development but still very helpful).”
Jason: “In terms of design, designers are going to start focusing on the mobile design first, then building up, instead of designing the desktop first and trying to make it work for mobile.”
Dave: “Websites are going to be designed more and more as 'mobile-first' with the desktop version being the afterthought.”
