It is burning hot day in Chennai with soaring temperatures and dust dispersing all across, our city is progressing slowly in its infrastructure. It is almost the same kind of development in my career lately, a much required & desired stride towards mobile platforms.
The Switch
After years of wrestling with WordPress themes, CMS engines, and designing micro and CMS websites, I've made it official that I'm transitioning to mobile app UI/UX design. The timing caught me completely off guard and I had so many web projects lined up, including a data-heavy application and my own website redesign that I'd been obsessing over. \ But sometimes life has different plans, doesn't it?
What I'm leaving behind
Don't get me wrong, this isn't the end of my relationship with web development. It's more like, taking a different road to the same destination. I've always wanted to share the concepts and prototypes I've been building, but NDAs have kept most of my work under wraps. Now I can finally share more personal projects and honest thoughts about design.
I'm particularly excited about this new website design I've been tinkering with. There's also this flat design guide I created at my previous workplace that was meant to be built with Drupal with progressive UX enhancements. I've handed it over to the team, and honestly, it's a bit frustrating not being able to see it through. But sometimes you have to trust that others will bring your vision to life, maybe even improve on it.
Web vs mobile design
Moving from content management systems to dedicated mobile platforms has been... well, cheeky is putting it mildly. I thought I had web development figured out with responsive design, HTML5, cross-platform compatibility. In my mind, these technologies were the great unifiers that would make platform differences irrelevant.
Boy, was I wrong.
Viewing mobile design from this focused perspective has shown me there's still so much depth to explore in each platform. Yes, HTML5 and responsive design are incredible tools, but mobile apps require a completely different mindset. It's like the difference between designing a Swiss Army knife and crafting a specialised surgical instrument, both are valuable, but they serve entirely different purposes.
What's next
I have a dozen analogies passing through my mind about why native vs. cross-platform development is more complex than we make it out to be, but honestly, I don't have enough mobile experience yet to make those arguments convincingly. Better to collect some realworld experiences first.
One thing that surprised me: finding reliable information about transitioning from web to mobile app design is surprisingly difficult online. Maybe I was searching fussily, or maybe there's genuinely a gap in available resources. Either way, I plan to document this journey and share what I learn along the way.
Timeline
As for my website redesign, I'm thinking mid-June to July for launch. Finding time outside of work is going to be the real difficult, especially while I'm learning an entirely new design discipline.
More updates to come. Keep an eye on this blog.
Cheers.