Why a CEO should champion Responsive Web Design

I disagree.<p>A CEO should be setting the direction, and letting his managers (and their staff) decide upon the best way to implement it. "Make our product work on mobile devices", not "Use Responsive Web Design because I've read it's the best for all cases".<p>A CEO needs to trust his managers to do the right thing for the company while following his direction. If they don't, then they're not doing their job, and should be dealt with as such.<p>This, of course, does not apply to those who wear the CEO, Manager and Employee hat all at the same time.

In that case, neither JOBS nor Tim Cook is a Champion, I guess, because Apple's homepage isn't responsive by any means. But, if Jobs and Cook aren't great examples of a good CEO, then I wonder who is.<p>So, fuck responsive design, I'm a designer with experience and I can tell you only this - People with retina displays and high resolutions are already used to visiting MANY websites that aren't responsive yet, and if your site isn't, it's only a good thing, because, responsive design is a tricky pond, if you slip, you're screwed. It's much, much easier to break stuff trying to be responsive than on a fixed-width website. And a perfectly working fixed-width website is much, much better than a broken responsive website.<p>This article is BS. There isn't enough data to support the claims made by the author.

This is dumb. Responsive design doesn't necessarily increase usability, and could massively decrease it - if you create a one-size-fits all interface, a lot of platform-specific UX enhancements can be lost - e.g. touch events like swiping through a slideshow etc.

Frankly, I don't buy the idea that a CEO should champion RWD or have any bias towards it. However, it is a good idea for the CEO to <i>know</i> what responsive web design is. Of a start-up or a small company, that is.<p>Agreed that it is nice to be aligned with the web as much as possible, but RWD can easily become an expensive undertaking for a company with fewer resources at hand. You don't want RWD to come in between when there is just too much to experiment with and throw away. Not recommended to start-ups, not at least to CEOs without hands-on on design.<p>In fact, if you look at how fragmented the support (actually miserable) for web standards is on the mobile, the best option would be to let the team take this decision, not CEO alone. And if a CEO with zero technical/web-design skills says 'Yay, RWD!' just because he/she read it somewhere then, I believe, it is more trouble for the company than any help.<p>Also RWD is not feasible in several scenarios. Many a times it is safer to premise the design for iPad and above for one part and iPad Mini and below for the other half. Or just stick to time tested fixed-column design.

I'm waiting for the Onion follow up "5 reasons the CEO shouldn't have given the CTO a wedgie before the board meeting again".

Um, a CEO should champion a direction and a vision much less than an implementation. The job of the CEO is to make sure everybody can do their job, the bills are paid, the company grows, etc. To run the company, not to build the tech stack.<p>Also, responsive design is fine, but it's not perfect by any means. It adds cost, it adds complexity, and it isn't always the best interface to reach the end users.<p>There is upside to responsive design, but it's not magic and it shouldn't be touted as some kind of panacea to all things.

I agree.