In creating responsive rich internet applications we've begun to run into a lot of little UI issues during our testing phases and we're looking to develop a strategy to navigate this period quicker. One idea is to create tiers of what we find acceptable on certain devices. This is a very rough idea, but I was looking for input from the community.
While our analytic reports indicate almost 500 different devices, there are clear leaders that may deserve more attention than others. As depicted in the image below, iPad and iPhone users are the clear majority in our user base, but all of the other devices added up still equal 48% and throwing out those users' experience completely would be an error on our part. Nor can we suggest that our users change their device, as was common place in the desktop browser realm.
- Do you think a tiered approach, with different levels of acceptability based on the amount of users is a good approach? Are all your users' experiences created equal?
- Would there be other criteria to consider beyond, how many people use a given device?
Rough sketch of the idea:
download bmml source – Wireframes created with Balsamiq Mockups
Of course in a perfect world, we would want to create the perfect experience on every device, but I believe it is not always worth the cost. There will always be a minority who feels some UX pain based on their device/browser/OS etc... (ask any linux user).