Responsive design is a compelling way to organize your design and development process. It feels more elegant to have a single presentation layer, and fluid layouts with page-width breakpoints have a great “wow factor” when resizing a browser window. There’s just one problem. The websites aren’t any better. They’re slow to load on mobile devices. Sometimes their visual and architectural choices are showy but functionally questionable. A responsive site is like a multi-tool screwdriver, with little bits for different screw sizes. It works fine for small projects, but for professional work, you need a variety of tools. We separate mobile, tablet, desktop and in-store behavior to optimize the shopper experience for each channel. So why does our development philosophy do the opposite, collapsing users into a single “responsive experience?” We expect attendees to violently disagree or jump for joy. After the commotion, we’ll talk about the type of tools that surgical web design might need.