To say something that we all already know: mobile is changing the web. Applications and APIs are now more than ever molding the way we think, use, interact, design and develop. As a developer, whether at the office or at home, when I am on the computer I am working. My browser rarely points anywhere but localhost and typically the only other windows I have open fully relate to my current project, whether that mean XCode, TextMate, Transmit, Sequel Pro, Photoshop, etc. I spend too much time working on my computer to be distracted by other areas of the web. Thusly, my media life revolves heavily around my iPhone. And why shouldn’t it? I am able to fill those small gaps of time (waiting in line for coffee, ordering lunch, commercial breaks) with anything I choose. From my RSS Reader to the Associated Press to Angry Birds, I have more than enough in my front pocket to digest. And I like to think of myself as uber-efficient with everything I do, so why would I want to occupy the valuable time I have for developing with browsing YouTube. In fact, I’ve grown so accustom to this format of my digital life, that if I’m doing something online that takes any length of time, like uploading a massive file, running a huge script or opening any Photoshop file (chuckle), I tend to grab my phone and see what’s going on on Twitter.

Not all of us are developers and I am sure that most individuals spend a fair amount of time browsing the web the old fashioned way… via their computer. But what we need to understand as the movers of this industry, and more importantly for the sake of our clients, is the accessibility of the information we so desperately want seen. The simple fact is, if I run across a link via Twitter that takes me to a site, the easier that information is to digest, the more time I spend browsing. I’ll go even further and fully admit, while being somewhat proud to say, that I base the decisions on who gets my money solely on said company’s technological prowess. For example, my cable company has an app that allows me to browse television listings and record programs with a simple touch. Simple. But simple does not always mean easy. Usually it means the exact opposite. The more we try to make our information accessible the more thought and work that goes into a site. Turning every site we build into a mobile application or responsive design would take too much time, and as we all know, time is money.

So what then, is the solution?

Well, if we know the mobile web is getting larger every day, then why are we still building the web for a desktop-laden world and trying to fit our square websites-pegs into our round mobile-device holes? Why not just build the peg round to begin with?

Think about how a mobile website or application is built. Because the information we provide is being digested in a quicker way and on a smaller screen we need to concentrate the content when going from desktop to mobile. We start with our beautiful 960 grid with wonderful sidebars and headers and images and links and possibly even an ad or two and we start stripping it down. “What can we lose?” we start asking ourselves. We choose the finest pieces of content and we leave the rest. Does this process sound at all familiar to you? Isn’t this how you designed the entire website from day one? From the moment you started thinking about site arch this is what you were doing. You focused on the most important content, the best images, the stickiest links and you built around them. And now here you are, so far removed from that initial discovery phase that you are doing the same exact thing, only this time in reverse. So I ask ya, why not just just start from the end? (Or end at the beginning depending on how you want to look at it.)

Build mobile out

When I think of the web I can’t help but think of growth; nearly infinite growth at that. Not only from the shear number of websites that are out there, but from how the web itself has grown and continues to grow. If I were any type of artist I would draw you a nice picture of a fledgling plant with just a few tiny roots that began to grow. And as it grew its little plant arms would get so large that they could not support their own weight, so they would split into two and continue to grow. Those two little arms would become four and those four would become eight. And they would grow and divide, grow and divide, onward and upward like Jack’s Beanstalk into the heavens until there are so many plant tentacles you could barely see the sky through them. I feel the same when I build a website. It starts as just a few snippets of code and grows to be bigger than I thought it ever could be. So why would we ever want to take something so large, something we have nurtured and helped grow, and start hacking at it with a machete so that we can fit it into a nice little mobile box?

By thinking about and understanding mobile design, we are able to concentrate on the most important elements our site has to offer. From there we can build up and allow our site to grow organically. Make no mistake, I am not an information architect. I am merely a developer. But every aspect of our jobs can hold within it these basic principles and we can stop hacking at the web and at our websites, and we can start making them grow.