The Value of Low-Fidelity Prototypes

It is very alluring to build a product right away once you have an idea. Especially if you’re an engineer like myself, you have already thought of the object model, where you’re going to pull data from, and the views you’re going to render. STOP!

Iterate, iterate, iterate.

In the past, I’ve been guilty of this dangerous pattern. I’ve had to re-design webpages and have started my work directly in Photoshop, only to realize a few hours later that my design was poorly thought out and non-functional. Before actually getting in the weeds (with high-tech tools like Photoshop, XCode, Visual Studio, etc.), there is high value in taking out the ol’ pencil and paper to sketch out some concepts. It allows you to focus on the big picture.

Take for example Duncan McKean’s design of a chess set for the blind. He drew hundreds of concepts before actually switching to high-tech CAD tools for higher-fidelity mockups. This approach gave him much success, as he was able to finish the project in 10 days.

Sometimes, I struggle with low-fi prototyping because I am fearful I might run out of creative ideas. I’m not in the habit of making too many of these, so I’ve found inspiration in several articles laden with examples of low-fi prototypes. The best of these is a recent one from Laura Busche’s Smashing Magazine article, “The Skeptic’s Guide To Low-Fidelity Prototyping”. She gives great examples of 2D and 3D low-fidelity prototypes people have used on the journey toward their final product.

Low-fidelity prototypes allow you to fail and iterate much faster than with high-tech tools, learning a lot along the way. I’m hoping to use these techniques and inspiration from the examples above in upcoming projects of mine, as they seem to give you better quality products in less time.