When the first iPhone came out, I got in a lot of trouble from my web and mobile peers for publicly saying, “The iPhone is the only mobile device that matters right now.” They would argue, “What about ABC or XYZ platforms?” My response was that those are important, but the iPhone provides the best possible experience and that is where consumers will go. Since those days, we’ve seen the iPhone shatter just about every record in mobile devices, becoming one of the best-selling phones ever and one of the most used mobile browsers in the world—two-thirds of mobile browsing in the U.S. comes from an iPhone or an iPod touch, not to mention that more than a billion mobile applications have been sold for these devices in under a year.

Recently, I was speaking at a conference where I ran into one of my peers, who questioned my premise that the iPhone was the most important device in mobile. He came up to me, and the first thing he said was, “I remember you telling me ages ago that the iPhone is the only device that mattered, and I didn’t believe you. And here we are today focusing our business on the iPhone.” It was an odd (and rare) reverse I-told-you-so moment. Here was this seasoned mobile guy telling me that his instincts had been wrong and my instincts had been right. I thought it must have been hard for him to go against his instincts and shift not just his thinking but his entire business toward supporting one popular device.

The lesson here is that although it may defy your business instincts to focus your product on just one device, in mobile development, the risks and costs of creating that tent-pole product are just too high. This lesson is so easily seen through bad or just plain uninspired mobile design. Asking creative people to create uninspiring work is a fast track to mediocrity.

Here is a design solution: design for the best possible experience. Actually, don’t just design for it: focus on creating the best possible experience with unwavering passion and commitment. Iterate, tweak, and fine-tune until you get it right. Anything less is simply unacceptable. Do not get hindered by the constraints of the technology. Phrases like “lowest common denominator” cannot be part of the designer’s vocabulary.

Your design—no, your work of art—should serve as the shining example of what the experience should be, not what it can be. Trying to create a mobile design in the context of the device constraints isn’t where you start; it is where you should end.

I think one of the greatest mistakes we in the mobile community make is being unwilling to or feeling incapable of thinking forward. The tendency to frame solutions in the past (past devices, past standards) applies only to those low-quality, something-for-everyone-but-getting-nothing tent-pole products. Great designs are not unlike great leaps forward in innovation. They come from shedding the baggage regarding how things are done and focus on giving people what they want or what they need.