Mobile-First Responsive Design
August 30, 2023
What is?
Designing for the smallest screen and working your way up to tablet, laptop.
It is the ideology that the mobile design is the most difficult part and should be done first. Once the mobile design is done, designing for other devices will be easier. The smallest of the designs will have only the essential features, so right away you have designed the heart of the UX.
The opposite approach is designing the complexities from the start with a big screen, then strip down features for smaller screen. The problem is that you build all inclusive design from the start, the core and sub elements are merged together so then it’s hard to distinguish and separate. This method treats mobile users as second-class residents by cutting down the experience.
The heart of the site is content
If your site is good on a mobile device, it translates better to all devices. Mobile has the most limitations (e.g. screen size, interaction…), and so designing in this condition makes you totally focus on the main content.
The mobile-first approach organically leads to a design that’s more content-focused, and therefore user-focused.
Another advantage to the mobile-first approach is that the small-screen breakpoints can better fit around the content. Again, the alternative is worse: having to squeeze an already plump design into a tiny framework. But with the mobile-first approach, the breakpoints develop naturally around content.
Reference
https://www.uxpin.com/studio/blog/a-hands-on-guide-to-mobile-first-design/