One web, under the internet, flexible enough to deliver content for us all. Sounds great, but in two years we’re all going to have the same site.
One web. That’s where we live now. It’s obvious, but I can’t say I’m ecstatic about the design implications.
On the one hand, for the vast majority of our clients, an adaptive or responsive approach makes all the sense in the world for all the right reasons. A single code base, flexible enough to distribute a relatively consistent brand experience over desktop, tablet, and smartphone. Their “adaptive” nature makes them “future proof.” The notion being that a flexible, adaptive site can scale and adapt to screens small, large and anything in-between.
The technology and design opportunities of this paradigm are fresh and new but like all technologies, it has its limitations. Adaptive/Responsive, like Flash or standard html has a set of rules that must be learned and internalized. Within those rules one can bend and innovate, but its structure is such that you are base-lining your site and content to a lowest common denominator (albeit one that is inclusive of most devices, so we got that going for us).
“Get your content ready to go anywhere because it’s going to go everywhere.” -Brad Frost
It’s an exhilarating thought and he’s basically right. That’s certainly the expectation from users. Like Veruca Salt from Willy Wonka, they want it and they want it noooooow!
Although, I would argue that the ubiquity of presence does not necessarily lead to the greatest user experiences everywhere. And there lies the rub. As your designer, I seek to create optimal communication and hierarchy everywhere.
One of the keys to adaptive/responsive development suggests that a “mobile first” approach is the most efficient route for development. The idea being that by identifying your core features and content in a mobile/smartphone setting, you can establish your brands most critical features and content, and then “progressively enhance” these features as you scale up to the screen real estate afforded in tablets and desktops.
And like much industry jargon, its delivery falls short of its promise.
Which is to say, that “progressive enhancement” surely occurs as we scale up, but so far as I can tell, it’s at best a marginal and sub-optimal way to design interactive.
Why? Simply put, adaptive/responsive sites have significant rules of layout and structure. You cannot always place features and content where the relationships make the most sense or are needed on a given screen. The nature of the paradigm discourages layout specificity for one screen for flexibility over the many.
The visual result of the migration to adaptive/responsive design is a fairly consistent look and feel across these sites. All hail the long, scrolling tabloid-designed sites.
Big image panels with minimal typography stacked on flat color fields with minimal typography over a white panel with either a large scalable image or white space with minimal typography. And if you’re feeling particularly saucy that day, for variety, you might have a two or three column teaser panel sandwiched between your large scalable image and flat color field.
At first, it was quite exciting to see such bold minimalism and big visuals. Until you start seeing a lot more of them and then some more. The patterns in the paradigm are easily recognizable and predictable.
At this moment in interactive, the need for coverage across countless devices trumps the need to customize and hone layout, functionality, and hierarchy for any one device. As with many leaps forward in interactive design and technology, we take a couple of steps back too. The explosion of tablets and smart phones ushered in a new era of user connectivity that has also constricted (in the short term) even the most basic creative capabilities from a few years ago (sorry, Flash).
Adaptive/responsive is still relatively new from a development standpoint so it is assured that, in time, the technology and methodology will improve and leap forward again. But for now we toil within the limitations of adaptive/responsive. I’m not saying I disagree with the choice, given the cost and nature of the investment, only that it will come with a price: the sneaking feeling of sameness of most web design in the short term.
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