The best of modern web designers embody that philosophical approach in regards to the 'building / making' element of how a final web design lives. This is a fuller consideration of how the design works, and can only be achieved by working with the 'materials', just as Ive mentions is essential at Apple for product design.
I never said design can't or shouldn't use napkins, keynote, Photoshop, Illustrator or whatever a designer chooses, or pass any commentary on how designers at Apple internally prototype UIs.
I did imply though that a web designer that stops at the PSD mockup stage doesn't embody the design approach Ive is discussing in the article. Without working directly with the materials (HTML / CSS) you are deciding not to entirely consider all elements of how the design lives:
* are webfonts available for this typeface?
* does CSS provide those visual effects, and if not, what fallback designs should I consider?
* can the design work across all target devices / browsers?
* will the page weight be too large to support this particular design approach. Can I simplify to avoid this?
Mocking up a variety of screens in Photoshop does not cut it at the best end of the scale as a web designer.
Then again responsive in the web is a co-out and a fad -- instead of creating the best experience for each screen size, you give them some sliding or expanding divs and some dissapearing elements from the "full-on" design and call it a day.
I've never seen a responsive page I like on a mobile device. I'd take the full page, in which I can pan and zoom, anytime.
http://dish.andrewsullivan.com
For a site that would be much better with a responsive design look at
Responsive may be difficult to capture in static comps, but when these comps can be made much more quickly, attention can be given to user experience overall, not just isolated fragments of user interface. And it's difficult to deny Apple's success at driving conversions and purchases.
While adaptive UI can be done right (and yes, that's the correct name for it, "responsive" typically refers to reaction lag, not screen size), and is definitely a nice tool in the designer's toolbox, it's very telling that various "responsive evangelists" keep popping out of everywhere talking about the virtues of "responsive" where no one asked them. Say like the poster I was replying to here.
This behavior is typical for something at peak hype. They're just so excited about it, they can't comprehend why everyone isn't getting a boner about "responsive" so they have to talk about it non-stop to clue us in on the awesomeness we're allegedly missing. It's like Ruby on Rails all over again.
Which is to say the "responsive" movement right now is 80% bullshit and 20% useful technique (when used in moderation). And I have examples to support that.
Part of "responsive" is the horrible practice of rolling menus into obscure hamburger buttons, outright hiding panels with useful content and functionality, or presenting bizarre interaction patterns that some harebrained designer thought are more smartphone-ey.
This is not helping your users, it's pissing them off and making them spend a lot of time hunting for the "desktop version" link on your site.
Do give them.
"This is not helping your users, it's pissing them off and making them spend a lot of time hunting for the "desktop version" link on your site."
Not for the site I worked on. When we switched to responsive mobile use skyrocketed on our site.
For the record, a lot of the UI prototyping at Apple is done in Photoshop.
It's also done on paper napkins, in Keynote, in Illustrator, in Xcode and with whatever works.
Good designers don't judge you based on what tools you use, and they're not picky about what tools they use. They'd use anything. The important part is how you think.
You can think about all sorts of screens and devices and do it in Photoshop. You can also produce unusable trite crap in static HTML.