Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
While mobile-first web design ensures the prioritisation of content and can provide a solution to tight budget and time constraints, it is still not accurate to believe that this should be the user’s primary experience. In the UK, at least 66% of people use their mobile phone to browse the internet, but this doesn’t mean that mobile-first will be specific enough to user needs. Design that is truly user-centered needs to follow their journey directly to identify how they complete their objectives. This is what we call journey driven design.
The flaw of mobile-first thinking
User experience products aren’t easy to design, launch and maintain because there are many things that need to be considered. Identifying and incorporating the user’s needs, expectations, goals and habits can all make for a challenging design process which is why it has become more important, to begin with, a well-researched user journey. Doing this will allow the designer to be one step ahead at all times and more accurately define the user’s needs, no matter how complex.
Initially, designers approached mobile web design as they would a desktop (except with a much smaller screen). The designer was used to considering how the user would approach a website and the visual, contextual and linguistic clues they’d need to achieve their goal but when the size of the screen changes, so does this way of thinking.
Then came Luke Wroblewski in 2009 who introduced mobile-first, and Karen McGrane in 2012 with her book ‘Content Strategy for Mobile’. To them, mobile-first is great because the constraints of a small screen allow designers to prioritise content, achieving a better overall experience for the user.
Graceful degradation vs. Progressive enhancement
What neither Wroblewski nor McGrane considered was that this process only focused on one experience. Graceful degradation refers to a desktop-first approach, starting with a wide viewport and degrading as the screen gets smaller. Progressive enhancement is the inverse, beginning with a smaller screen and progressing as it gets larger. In honesty, neither of these processes truly achieves a great design, but when you believe that mobile-first doesn’t necessarily mean mobile only, this doesn’t really matter.
Of course in this day and age, everything needs to be mobile-friendly, and as of 2015, Google even began penalising websites that weren’t. The choice isn’t as simple as mobile or desktop, though, as many users tend to switch mid-task, so it’s important that both of these experiences are kept in mind throughout the design process. Founder of Smart Insights, Dave Chafey analysed a recent report on mobile marketing statistics and concluded “The reality is that while smartphone use is overwhelmingly popular for some activities such as social media, messaging and catching up with news and gossip, the majority of consumers in western markets also have desktop (and tablet) devices which they tend to use for more detailed review and purchasing.”
What’s more, if not properly thought out, mobile-first may yield some unintended consequences. That’s not to say that desktop-first doesn’t have consequences too but things such as data-intense applications and data writing can often be a struggle for users on mobile devices.
Be user-first, not mobile-first
We don’t need to tell you that responsive website design and development is a given but user experience also has a huge role to play. Unless the audience that you’re working with is specifically mobile heavy, an approach that suits all devices is always the best way to go.
