• Standing desk for work. I’ve read all sorts of reports that basically state, he who sits most, dies first. Got plans for a cheapo one online. Building it this weekend.
• Blog. Heh, said this last year. Trying to stick to it this. I get self conscious about my posts and end up deleting them. Going to try and leave em up this time. Oh yeah, and I’m going to finally theme my blog.
• Exercise. I gotta. Sick of being tired, in pain and unproductive. I hesitate to join my gym at work, as I get there late and leave on time due to my commute. That’s just an excuse though. Lunchtimes. Oh yeah, and I’ve got that brand new $1,000 bike I bought three years ago. I’ve used it three times. How lame is that?
• Game less, create more. I’m a gamer at heart, but I need to do it less. I need to stop playing in other people’s works and make some of my own. Willpower. Get back into drawing
• Be more positive and dwell less on the negative. I get caught up in drama and gossip at work. Have to stop it and think (and show) good thoughts.
• Go back to school. Start working on my masters. Time to take it to the next level. I’ve wrung all I can out of my bachelors.
• Play with my sons more. And read to them.

I may add to this as the weeks run by and I hope to consult this list as the year progresses. Wish me luck Internet!

So how does me being a dinosaur relate to a mobile-first strategy for responsive design? Glad you asked. heheh. It makes you take a cold, hard look at your content, evaluate what the goals for your site are, and how you can display that to your audience in the most speedy, lean manner, while still making it appealing and enticing. Feels like to me that alot of modern web design has become sloppy- many designers don’t think about image size and how “heavy” a page is with code. With 100mb+ connections and 3G/4G etc speeds, for some designers, it doesn’t seem to be a worry any more. The moblie-first philosophy makes you step back and reevaluate and focus on what is truly important. You think about the performance of the site because you have to- someone using it on a phone, may not have a spectacular connection. So you make it lean and to the point. You prioritize.

With mobile-usage experiencing such growth (my site has seen its mobile usage double- just since July!), its truly becoming the platform of choice, so it makes sense to optimize for our main audience- which is rapidly becoming the mobile platform.

I don’t see alot of disadvantages to this approach. Going mobile first can mean that you might have to make some design compromises on the larger screens. For example check out http://nd.edu On their home page, they have those three content boxes on the top on the left of the page. On mobile, they are perfectly sized- gorgeous. However, in my opinion, on the desktop, they seem a bit small- that space could be better utilized i feel. I think it was probably just their implementation, but in order to work around that, you’d have to put more time/effort into alternative stylesheets for the desktop version. Not knocking ND- their site is light years better than mine! Just a friendly critique.

As far as Higher Ed is concerned, I think the biggest issue is getting people to understand that things need to be prioritized- that we need to take a cold, hard look at what our audiences truly need- not just what we think they need for content. Or what we think we have to put on the home page just to please our bosses. Higher Ed is famous for its glacial speeds when trying to accomplish things and also for over complicating things. Making a lean/mean mobile-first site is going to be a challenge- clearing out the cruft and making it truly audience-focused.

While it might be a bit of a bear in Higher Ed, I will and already am advocating for a mobile-first design approach. It makes perfect sense-
1. Our users are more and more often using the mobile platform. One day they will be the dominant.
2. We need to play to our audience- if mobile is what they are using, we need to display the content for them in a format optimized for mobile.
3. Its lean, fast, prioritized content. Puts the information they are looking for front and center- which makes solid design sense.