Responsible Responsive Design

Introduction

In early 2012, my wife and I rented an apartment in Siem Reap, Cambodia. She was volunteering at a children’s hospital; I was clocking in remotely to build websites with my Filament Group colleagues back in the United States. I worked this way for months as we traveled the region, passing through some of the most resource-strapped places in the developing world—Laos, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and Nepal. Each stop offered an opportunity to use the web under the same, often constrained conditions that people who live there do. It tested my assumptions as a designer and my patience as a user.

You’ve likely read that mobile services are the primary means of internet access for many in developing parts of the world, and my casual observations ...