For a while now people have been extolling the virues of Responsive Web Design (even though some people have argued it should be Adaptive Web Design), as a method of altering the way a web site or application is dynamically altered based on the medium that it is being viewed with. This, obviously, can only be A Good Thing™ for anything web - there are not only numerous screen reslotions to deal with nowadays, but countless different devices that all think they know how best to display your pride and joy.

This is all very well, but we're missing a vital point - altering the UI to make it look nice is one thing, but are we considering the "U", the User, enough?

I started my working career in a call centre. Answering phones, responding to customer queries, cross-selling services. Even though the types of call were not that intersting, each customer situation had it's own unique variances - complaints, sales enquiry, age of customer, accent - each variable called for subtle alterations from my side of operations to enable a successful outcome. By reacting to the customer I would be able provide a better level of customer service and, if dealing with them in the future, I would have a history of experience to call on that wouldd allow me to be more proactive to their needs.

This is a simple example of customer service, but it got me into thinking how we build things on the web.

Take an e-commerce application for example. A user browses your stock, they select items to add to their basket, they checkout, they leave. Or, they put things in the basket, but then they change their mind, then leave. Or you're just too expensive, and leave.

Okay, so many online shops or e-commerce packages have concepts like displaying related items of things you've viewed or recently purchased, but how about a system that is monitoring what the user has been looking at in their current browsing session, reviewing the navigation trail that they have taken since landing on the site, what options they have selected, their deliberations, and reacting on the fly to give them a more customised experience. How about the following examples:

• A user hits a page 3 or 4 times, but leaves evertime by clicking the browser's back button. Why are they doing this? Is there an issue with site navigation? Can they find what they're looking for? Would it be beneficial to take them to a site search page, or even redirect them to a top-level page?

• A page expires with pending changes waiting to be committed. Have they forgotten they have pending changes? Could you automatically commit them, with an option for them to easily back the changes out if required? Could you email them with the pending change details so they can re-enter them at a later date?

• A user puts an item in the shopping cart, then leaves the site twice, returning both times from competitor sites viewing the same item. What are they comparing? Could you alter the price at all? Could you offer any other incentives on the fly to convince them to purchase through your site?

These are all hypothetical situations, and a system to offer the type of instant "reaction" is far from a defacto implementation in modern web applications, but if we could think in terms of not only how we portray the web to our users but also how we are perceiving their experience of our web applications in a very real-time sense, it would greatly improve our understanding of the "U" in User.