The Virtues of Low-fi - Speaker Deck

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The Virtues of Low-fi Stephen Hay @ Catawiki UX Crawl • July 25, 2018

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Hi! I’m Stephen.

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Design/UX Deliverables

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“The perfect is the enemy   of the good.” —Voltaire

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Not the thing. Not the thing. The thing.

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Design processes

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Short low / long high Low-fi High-fi “I’ve been thinking about this for a whole hour, and I’ve got a great idea!”

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Gradual low to high Low High Kinda high Kinda high Kinda high Kinda high Kinda high

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Long low / short high Low-fi High-fi “I’m starting to understand the problem.”

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The most important question:  What’s most important?

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The design funnel https://changethis.com/manifesto/show/48.04.DesignFunnel Many designers start here. Define Discover Generate Create Design Values & Goals Moods & Metaphors Ideas, Define a concept A Visual Language

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Most of this can be low-fi

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Fantasy-fi Usually needs high fidelity Interaction Sensory   Experience Content &  structure “High” fidelity that   doesn’t offer much more than low fidelity, but requires High-fidelity effort. It’s the illusion of reality. Many “static” prototypes fall into this category.   High-fi wireframes also.

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The virtues of low-fi

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1. Iterations are   quick and cheap

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2. Low-fi tooling is   minimal and flexible.

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3. Low-fi answers   questions early. “Nice. What about (x)?” “Oh, shit.”

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4. Low-fi encourages quantitative ideation.

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5. Low-fi encourages   “most important” thinking. It’s a meeting between your brain and the problem, with few distractions from tooling and processes.

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Things that can be low-fi: • Sketching • Storyboards • Diagrams • (Paper) prototypes (but be careful!) • Planning • etc. These are actually subsets of sketching

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Sketching

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Sketching is not art.

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A simple sketching process for ideation…

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Thumbnails

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No detail As many as possible As quickly as possible variety

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Roughs PHOTO: Mike Rohde. Visit his blog: http://rohdesign.com/weblog/

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Only a few, max. Flesh out your best ideas Focus on more detail (but not too much) Annotate, Ask & Answer questions

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Thumbnails -> selection -> Roughs -> selection -> Comp/Prototype

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Exercise 1: Sketch some thumbnails   for your project. 1. No detail; just capture ideas! 2. Make as many as you can in 5 minutes. It’s a numbers game! 3. Don’t censor yourself; all ideas are relevant at this point.

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Exercise 2: Make some rough sketches. 1. Flesh out your best thumbnail ideas to see if they hold up. 2. More detail, but not too much!

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Sketching is one of your most important skills. It’s a translator between your brain and paper. It’s a note-taking tool. It’s a communication tool. It’s a thinking tool. It’s a filter. It’s a wayfinder. It’s the lowest of low-fi. Do it always.

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Thank you! @stephenhay