As my last assignment in Web Design Bootcamp, we are to take a snapshot of Responsive Websites in the Summer of 2012. (What is Responsive? I love this article that answers that question.)

This assignment put forth by Erik Fadiman is one of those tests where it seems the only solution is to call the test unfair and consider it a test of character. No test should be as unfair as this. It’s 2012 and he wants us to find responsive websites and take notes on what their doing. These are precious needles in the haystack of the internet. Things I love and things that I thought would be responsive are not. And many things that are mobile-adapted are separate websites. A good solution, but not the most adaptable. Good design should be imperceptible. One should be able to go to any website on any web-enabled device. End of story. I can’t remember if a site has a separate mobile site or not. And I’m certainly not going to be roaming around on their lame website looking for the link. (Maybe if they’re nice, they’ll put it in the left upper corner or something.)

Mediaqueri.es is a good place to start looking at responsive websites. The links are all in one place and they are not really organized, so you get a really general visual survey. It seems that to have a responsive website right now, you have to be in the industries of web design or news media or be  just getting on to the “internet” scene. –Or music festivals and conferences. It seems very practical because it is at concerts and such where you need mobile information.– Lucky for people that have held out. They skipped the mandatory renovations that every website will have to go through to stay relevant.

For my research, I decided to collect screenshots of school/university sites. Karine Joly writes about how difficult it is to update a school website because of funding and staff limitations and the best solution is Responsive Web Design because it anticipates the future and all of the various mobile devices we are destined to be using.

I noticed that a few websites used a responsive jquery slideshow like the kind I learned how to code in Web Design Bootcamp. It is a great way to add interest and color to a text heavy medium. It was interesting to note the different ways the navigation bar transformed into blocks, lists and menus.

Here’s my design research_education (a web-view pdf) Can you spot the other trendy tricks the web designers used?

(Earlier Post Relating to This Project)