Interesting argument for not rushing into designing for mobile, from Richard Millington of The Online Community Guide: When To Design For Mobile – The Online Community Guide.
He analyses the figures for mobile use in the US, and the traffic via mobile to his blog. With the figures at <10%, he figures that there’s no rush to design for mobile, and that it’s better to focus on the platform that the majority of users are using.
And that’s certainly one view – and he has evidence to back to it up.
If you think about designing online information points as if you were designing a meal, how would you start? If I invite people over for a meal, I’m not just going to cook a roast if I know that a guest is vegetarian. I’ll sort out a meal that offers a great experience for everyone, not cook a chook, and quickly add on a shop-bought nut roast as an afterthought.
So, in terms of designing for all devices, including mobile, how about the view that:
- If 10% of folk want to access information via a device of their choice then they should be able to.
- If a disability or other reason that might limit your web access means that you are reliant on mobile, then you shouldn’t be disenfranchised from using it.
- Mobile access is often the cheapest – sometimes only – form that people can get their hands on, so they should be considered, too.
Ultimately, I guess I am thinking about the philosophical argument that, when we design information for others to read, we should start by designing for everyone, as a starting point. This is a key idea in Universal Design for Learning (UDL) (and thanks to Chrissie Butler at CORE Education for all the great conversations on this topic).
But whatever you call, it, I still think we should design for all, not just the majority, whatever the data tells us.
Thoughts?
karen spencer 
I’m trying to fall on one side of the argument but struggling – I suppose by using some free platforms or well designed themes for your sites they should already be mobile accessible… 🙂
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Design so form and function can be pushed while riding a bike.
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Thanks for stopping by, both:-)
DK – agree. Increasingly, many platforms will work across all devices. I guess I was taking it another step ahead again and thinking about how people design content on those platforms, and how accessible that is. And for people who are retro-fitting (as was discussed in the article to which I refer at the start), the argument that ‘not many people use mobile to access the web’ is not really a solid one (IMHO).
DG – Love the image:-) And agree, of course. What would happen if we got off the bike and went back to the drawing board. Would we still design a traditional two-wheeler?;-)
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