While you should try to support as large a proportion of your audience as possible, your analytics will show that a small group of browsers and devices make up the majority of your traffic, while the rest are a long tail of obscure browsers and devices. Take advantage of this.
Whatever we can do to increase the amount of ground will go a long way toward converting our users from passive consumers into brand evangelists.
Be dismissive of the non-smartphone only if you want to leave 4 billion customers on the table.
Interesting tech job truth:
The combined global workforces of Groupon, Facebook, LinkedIn, Zynga, Yelp, Pandora, and Zillow is smaller than the number that Circuit City fired in January 2009 when it was liquidated.
Yet another great argument for progressive enhancement.
Thank you Jeremy:
The web is not a platform. It’s a continuum.
The experiences we design must follow suit.
Every corner you cut is an opportunity to confuse, irritate, and lose users … lessen[ing] your product’s effectiveness.
[L]et’s stop thinking of the constraints of progressive enhancement as a creativity killer. We too can use the constraints to come up with genuinely creative ways to get round problems and become better designers.
Amen.
An interface inventory is similar to a content inventory, only instead of sifting through and categorizing content, you’re taking stock and categorizing the components making up your website, app, intranet, hoobadyboop, or whatever (it doesn’t matter).
From first use to navigation to lower-level screens, the motif should be infused throughout the customer’s experience. By making it a part of the on-boarding experience in particular, you’ll help to welcome new users in a natural, unforced way, rather than having to rely on instructional coaching…