Chapter 4. Responsive Versus Adaptive Design

Before jumping into designing our website, let's understand the difference between Responsive and Adaptive design and why it's necessary to understand it. The differences between Responsive and Adaptive design approaches are very important to know for web and app designers. Knowing these differences will empower you in planning and executing your designs with better vision and results.

With the number of devices we have nowadays, it's important to understand the needs and behavior of each device to really understand how to design it. Content is key, and it needs to flow between each device. See it as water cooling on each device, as Josh Clark says:

"Content is like water. Content's going to take many forms, flow into many different containers, many of which we haven't even imagined yet."

- (also inspired by Bruce Lee's famous quote)

Author/Copyright holder: Stéphanie Walter

Designers still get these mixed up and don't really see the boundaries between...