I came across this link the other day in reddit, for a marketing campaign from a UK mobile service provider. The campaign featured the song “We Built This City” by Starship”, in which you first watch an advert featuring a girl riding her bike with a cat in her front pannier. Then, you have the opportunity to upload your own photos and put yourself in the action. It’s great for a laugh, so see the picture for the link.
The UX bit that was interesting came about when I looked at the video on my iPhone. The setup for the video was designed in such a way that the designers preferred that you viewed it in portrait mode, rather than landscape. As I turned the phone on its side, instead of the layout adapting to my device’s new orientation, I got an on-screen message that said “Hey, where’ve you gone? Please turn your screen back to vertical mode.”
This got me to thinking about responsive design. One of the things that is great about responsive design is that it attempts to give the user a consistent experience across a variety of devices. However, good responsive design should go both ways. What I mean by that is that if the user experience is best served by viewing content in a certain orientation, then the user should also be able to be responsive to the system. This is not to say that it makes a case for bad design or for having users always adapt to the system. It just means that in situations where you have reached a limitation in the medium to give the best experience possible, we as users should also be a bit more flexible and trust that the designer thought through the experience when designing the system.
The relationship between the UX designer and the user, after all, is a partnership of sorts, benefiting from a continuous feedback loop that goes both ways.
