Responsive Design: Step-by-Step Guide
If you want your new digital product to be a success among users, it’s vital to opt for the responsive design approach. Responsiveness means that your product will be user-friendly regardless of the device and platform on which the user views it and tries to interact with its functions. Thus, whenever you use HTML or CSS to build a website, responsive design matters and contributes to your product’s usability and popularity. Not sure how to achieve this? Here is a step-by-step guide to lead you to genuine responsiveness.
Responsive Design ABCs
In a nutshell, responsive design refers to the fluid website layout that changes on a variety of screen sizes to optimize the users’ interactions with the menu. However, in reality, responsiveness is much bigger than this definition. Here are some tips to follow.
#1 Study Responsive Design Elements
To make the website equally usable on all devices, you need to make all its elements fluid and flexible. These elements typically include the fluid grid that changes the website’s size depending on the screen size, flexible images and text changing their places with the change of dimensions, and the flexibility of media queries. The combination of these elements makes responsiveness a reality.
#2 Seek Inspiration
Once you’ve decided to create a responsive website, it’s worth finding a couple of references as a starting point. Your web designer will understand the task better in this way. Besides, you will have a sample against which you can evaluate the proposed design solutions.
#3 Develop Appropriate Media Queries
Responsive design usually involves having the same HTML coupled with varied CSS media query positioning. You need to define these queries and apply conditions under which they change.
#4 Choose Breakpoints
The condition for different CSS media query use is typically a website’s breakpoint. It is a specific spatial arrangement option that determines what type of display your website will have on each device. Be logical in breakpoint choice and don’t use too many of them to avoid confusing the visitors.
#5 Conduct Field Testing
The final point in responsive design is the practical test of what you’ve created. It’s a vital step in any web design endeavor as it helps take an objective, sober look at whether the proposed solution is usable. You can ask a focus group to evaluate the prototype or test it on your own. In any way, you need to try all screen sizes and shapes to see whether all layout solutions make sense and serve their goals.