Responsive Design and Beyond

Responsive web design has taken our industry by storm and with good reason: it helps us improve our reach with less effort. But incorporating responsive design is not the goal, meeting our user’s needs is. Responsive design is not an end in itself… it’s just the beginning.

As a fitting way to kick off our new workshop series, Code & Creativity asked two internationally-renown mobile web and responsive design experts—Brad Frost (of This is Responsive, and Pattern Lab fame) and I—to come and teach you everything we need to know about working in this multi-device reality.

For the first part of the day, Brad and I surveyed the landscape of responsive design, covering:

• broad concepts,
• strategies,
• the design process & deliverables,
• emerging design patterns and principles, and
• development best practices and considerations.

Then, we broke into small groups to tackle some thorny responsive challenges through discussions, sketching, and even a little coding, while Brad & I provided real-time feedback and pushed attendees to go further. At the end, everyone shared their findings with the class and got additional feedback from the experts.