Should I design for mobile or web?

Hi Ravi, It all comes down to user experience. What you're talking about - converting a web design into a mobile design is called responsive deisgn, and that happens in code by the website programmer. These days most companies and client will ask for a responsive design or both design seperatly (if the design is too complicated to be ready responsive).

What I mean by responsive? It mean the programmer takes the images, texts and animation within the website and manipulate it so that it will look good on any size of screen (TV, computer monitor, tablet, phone, etc)

With a little practice and effort, you'll be able to learn how to do this in no time. Doing it well, and adding extras (such as animations) will come to with experience.

I hope this help, if you got more questions feel free to ask:)

I think you would best be able to answer that question depending on your needs. If you need the project up and running asap, and already have experience with web design you may want to get started there. After that you may be interesting in checking out the trailer for this course: https://teamtreehouse.com/library/build-a-blog-reader-iphone-app . Although, it is an intermediate course, and you have mentioned you do not have any experience with mobile development. But if you have a solid foundation in web or js you will likely be able to pick it up rather quickly, especially something like swift.

As far as converting web into an app, I cannot really comment as I do not have much insight into that topic...

But the application sounds rather simple and I am sure you would be able to complete it from the material available on TreeHouse. In any event, best of luck!

As you already have a background in webdesign I would start with a web based solution then integrate it into an app if it succeeds.

Start with a mobile webdesign first, you can even design it in such a way that it feels like the user is using an app rather than an website.

Build up on the mobile webdesign to a fullsize responsive design for larger screens.

If the directory app does well online, then maybe think about porting it to a mobile application, there is a larger process then just designing the app and dumping it on all the mobile marketplaces, there is a bit more to it than that unfortunately, which if the app does not kick off at all may feel like a waste of time.

Atleast if you make the web version first it is compatible for all devices and will give you a good idea if people will actually be interested in using it.

When you have the mobile app version you can easily add detection to the website to popup offering the mobile app to mobile users to transition them across.

Hi all - thanks for your replies! I am aware of responsive web design and understand I could design a responsive website to cater for mobile / tablet users.

I think the key for me is 1) to get something set up as quickly as possible to see if it's worth spending more time on, and 2) create it in such a way that it's easily accessible for most people. I suppose a responsive website would meet these criteria.

Thank you,