Learning Responsive Web Design

Chapter 7. Responsive Workflow

It’s one thing to understand all the pieces of a responsive website. It’s another thing altogether to be able to create one.

In this chapter, we’ll look at the process for creating a responsive design, starting with user research and content strategy, then designing in text, sketching, and creating responsive prototypes.

We’ll look at style tiles and other new approaches to design that provide alternatives to creating unresponsive, fixed-size designs in tools like Photoshop.

And at the end of the chapter, we’ll finish up by looking at how to sell responsive design—both to clients and to coworkers—and how to adjust your approach to working with clients when you’re doing a responsive project.

If you want to delve deeper into how to adjust your workflow to produce responsive websites, check out Stephen Hay’s book Responsive Design Workflow (http://responsivedesignworkflow.com).

Strategy and Planning

Before you even start thinking about the design of a website, you need to step back for a moment and think about the goals of the website.

Unless it’s the rare occasion when you’re just making a site for fun or practice, your goal isn’t to build a website, it’s to solve a problem: how to communicate with customers, how to sell products online, and so forth.

The website is the tool you’re creating to solve the problem.

You should know from the start what the goals are for the website or project, whether from your own communication with the client or stakeholders, or ...