Responsive Web Design: Principles and Usability

Responsive Web Design
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Introduction
Responsive web design (RWD) is a design approach which allows a website to be
displayed on all devices in a similar manner. There are several factors that influence design of
website to make it fit on any display resolution without distorting require content. With its ability
to resize and adopt to all manner of device resolution, sizing of all web elements should be set in
such a way that they are set in percentage rather than other units available in design such as
pixels (Ramachandran, 2012). The main goal of coming up with responsive web design was
based on capturing more users as well as enhance customer satisfaction. There has been much
focus on RWD due to variety of devices in use. Mobile internet users are more than computer
internet users because they are almost owned by everyone. In this regard, to make sure internet
users are comfortable with devices they own, the manner in which content is displayed on the
devices when accessing websites should be the same (Nandorf, 2013).
Creating user experiences
It is obvious that, in order to achieve desirable web design responsiveness, the design
techniques should be based on shuffling pages, development and design needs to make sure user
experience is smoothly met. Both development and design team should work closely to each
other to make sure website is responsive as well as usable by users despite screen resolution
displayed. For a website to be usable, system design should allow multiple uses without
considering its basic use (Bhaskar et al., 2011). To capture user experience while factoring
responsiveness, both functional and non-functional should be considered. In this case, user
experience on web responsiveness should be focused on all aspects such as text content, images,
video and feel of color despite the size of the display. Therefore, RWD cannot be disregarded as
one of the features that enhances design usability.

Responsive Web Design usability
System usability is the concept of having system that can be used for multiple purposes.
While factoring system usability, there are interface design rules that must be adhered to in order
to achieve usability. Consistency is one of the aspects that cannot be ignored when looking for
responsiveness in the website design. All devices are required to display the same content
without changing system’s color, distorting the content as well as images (Almeida & Monteiro,
2017). Despite change on display, all system functionalities should remain the same. A good
example can be deduced from system’s feedback where features like pop-ups should be available
despite the nature of screen used for display. To achieve responsiveness as well as usability, the
following guidelines should be adopted; resizing of required content to fit on a specific screen
being vertically or horizontally. To resize content on smaller devices, it is important to adopt
vertical display because there is more space when compared to horizontal display. The next
aspect of achieving responsiveness on smaller devices is to remove non-essential contents which
dos affect user affectionate in any way. Plechawska-Wojcik, Mora & Wojcik (2013) argues that
undesirable content should be filtered in such a way that, the flow of content is maintained
regardless of the device used for display. Further, with small devices, the fonts of the content
displayed can be affected by nature of display and this should be considered during design.
Failure to factor out font size would result to definite distortion of the content display. Finally,
important to note is that responsive web design should factor out white spaces as it is very
important in any device resolution display.
Principles of software design
Software design principles should be applied exclusively of software development being
undertaken. Though not all design principles can accommodate responsive web design, the