As our digital director, Tim Mather has seen the influence mobile has had on design in recent years. Here, he discusses how audiences’ behaviour has changed in the past few years and the impact that has had on design…  

We all know that mobile isn’t the “new thing” or “the future”, it is very much the present and without doubt it has been the biggest driver of change in web design over recent years.

We eat, sleep and breath our smartphones. It’s estimated that around 90% of us have our phones with us day and night, 68% of us check them within 15 minutes of waking up in the morning and 30% of us feel anxious when they’re not next to us.

The increasing popularity of smartphones means we must reflect how we design websites based on our audiences’ needs. Designing for mobile was initially a complicated process that required specific mobile content, design and code, but now responsive designs degrade gracefully from desktop to mobile with little effort. But is that enough? If we’re all mobile first, should we forget about desktop entirely and just focus on mobile sites?

Click here to read the full story in this month's Northern Insight magazine.