Miscellaneous thoughts:

- Javascript and the web are easy/cheap to develop

- Javascript apps are easy to convert to "native" apps

- Phones are terrible for using software and bias towards dark patterns. People don't explicitly believe this, but a business application that only works on a phone is probably going to be a non-starter

- It depends on who your users are, and what your app is

- Web is more common when starting, and apps get built after a company succeeds. Early users are more engaged, and willing to suffer non-optimal tech for something that solves their problems.

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Discussion

I was thinking somewhat along the same lines

Recently read Resilient Web Design, got inspired and told our UX designers in our requirements docs we want mobile first

Then we get into check in meetings and I’m seeing desktop layouts and I’m like wtf guys

My partner (dev) is like yo let’s just roll with it I can make this mobile later… and this will be faster/cheaper

So I compromise and say fine but as we do this I want to be able to understand clearly how this fits on mobile in the future.

And it’s reasonable… the issue keeps coming up (i.e. I keep asking) and if there’s no obvious solution we change something to acknowledge future mobile

…But at the end of the day we’re now making a web app first with desktop layouts lol 😩

I'm a big fan of mobile-first layouts, nothing is worse than trying to use something for desktop on mobile and seeing it completely broken. Maybe I'm contradicting myself here, but the exercise of designing for mobile really helps refine IA assumptions

agreed. if it breaks on mobile design has failed