Going Responsive

A Book Apart #16

by Karen Mcgrane

Responsive design is more than the technical; it’s a new way of communicating and working that affects every person on your team. Karen McGrane draws on data and stories from real-world teams to show you why going responsive is just good business sense—and how to set up your project (from concept to launch) for total success. Learn how to plan and scope work, collaborate in a responsive context, evaluate content, handle browser support and testing, and measure performance outcomes. No matter your role or project, go responsive with confidence.

Genres: Design, Web, Nonfiction

158 pages, ebook

Published November 18, 2015

Reviews

[Venkatesh-Prasad · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is not a how-to book about responsive design. Instead, it is a why-to book about responsive design. It explores the reasons why one should consider responsive design. Besides inherent benefit from responsive design, it explores various additional aspects that may benefit from responsive design.

While we know responsive design is a given today, there are quite a few websites (I'm not talking about personal websites) that can benefit from responsive design and there a whole lot of them that can benefit from good responsive design :) This book shines light on aspects that should be addressed to get good responsive design, e.g., content modeling, prioritization, cleaning up clutter, process for team, testing. Being a 150 page book, it scratches the surface and provides pointers; you will have to read other books for details. Nevertheless, this is a good place to start to know where to go.

Overall, a great resource for folks considering if they should invest effort in good responsive design.

[Oswaldo · Rating 3 out of 5]

A nice time-killer and a window into the past of when companies were still getting used to the rise in mobile traffic and switching over to responsive designs. The book was interesting in revealing how teams worked, strategies they would evaluate, test and the challenges they would go up against — and for that I value the book's insights rather well. I think it is essential every web developer understands how we evolved from one practice to another and in that I almost want to call this essential reading.

[Jess · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a great overview as to how responsive web design needs to be a team mindset rather than a "project." With practical tips and exercises, I found that this book acted as a reference tool for explaining different concepts to my colleagues. Parts of the book left me wanting more - and the author referenced other places to receive that content so the resulting book felt more like a rwd 101 or survey class. Overall I would recommend this to anyone working on the web today.

[Marcus Österberg · Rating 2 out of 5]

Pretty good read for the few who not already taken the responsive leap. For me this book is 2-3 years too late...

[Jon Daiello · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some very helpful tips and suggestions for any web or app project. However this book could benefit from a revision to more modern web standards. Many companies and platforms have embraced responsive requirements in their projects.