Going Mobile

For years, IGGY had successfully drawn thousands of teenage students to its online hub. However, in mid-2012, the organization realized their website lacked a proper mobile experience. IGGY’s team evaluated the options. As they didn’t want to rebuild the existing desktop website (something that Responsive Design would require), their best alternative was Adaptive Design.

University then contacted Vancouver-based Mobify, a company known for its Adaptive Design technology and, coincidentally, our trusted partner. After a brief discussion, Mobify considered us a better fit for a client and made an introduction. The IGGY–Skyrocket collaboration started.

Adaptive Design Challenge

Our User Experience designer, Arman Keyvanskhou, began by working closely with an IT team at IGGY to understand the underlying structure of an existing site that he would rely on to create a mobile version.  In short, to make an adaptive mobile website with Mobify means using their JavaScript framework to create templates by targeting (and then rearranging, hiding or modifying) specific <div> elements in the desktop website’s HTML structure. Doing so for a large and interactive website, like IGGY, is no easy feat.

Visuals in Place

Besides adapting the website, our team came up with a visual language to assist the mobile experience. This included icons, fonts and a colour palette, all of which were essential to communicating IGGY’s message properly.  We made sure to closely follow the aesthetics of the desktop website—said Arman.

Fantastic is the Word

Two months and nine templates later, Arman shared this GIF hinting that the work is soon to be completed. When asked about project’s challenges, Arman responded, “You really have to make sure the templates you build will be able to accommodate any changes on the website in the future. To get it right takes a lot of time.”  We say, “Do it well once, and it can serve you for years.” To this day (July 22, 2015), thousands of young IGGY students rely on our mobile website, virtually unchanged. Michael Parks, Skyrocket’s Creative Director, summed up the project succinctly, “It was a fantastic client!” Be sure to visit iggy.net (on your mobile)—this is the kind of work that makes us smile.