The Virtues of Low-fi

With all our fancy tools, many are eager to jump into higher fidelity comps. This talk and mini-workshop on sketching was about staying low-fi for as long as possible in the design process, and treating design deliverables as process rather than product.

Presented at Amsterdam UX Crawl @ Catawiki in Amsterdam.

Transcript

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

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2. Hi! I’m Stephen.
   

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3. Design/UX Deliverables
   

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4. “The perfect is the enemy 

   of the good.”
   —Voltaire
   

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5. Not the thing. Not the thing.
   The thing.
   

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6. Design processes
   

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7. 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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8. Gradual low to high
   Low High
   Kinda high
   Kinda high Kinda high Kinda high Kinda high
   

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

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10. The most important question:

    What’s most important?
    

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11. 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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12. Most of this
    can be low-fi
    

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13. 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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14. The virtues of low-fi
    

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15. 1.
    Iterations are 

    quick and cheap
    

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16. 2.
    Low-fi tooling is 

    minimal and flexible.
    

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17. 3.
    Low-fi answers 

    questions early.
    “Nice.
    What about (x)?”
    “Oh, shit.”
    

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18. 4.
    Low-fi encourages
    quantitative ideation.
    

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19. 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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20. 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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21. Sketching
    

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22. Sketching is not art.
    

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24. A simple sketching process
    for ideation…
    

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25. Thumbnails
    

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26. No detail
    As many as possible
    As quickly as possible
    variety
    

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

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28. 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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29. Thumbnails -> selection ->
    Roughs -> selection ->
    Comp/Prototype
    

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30. 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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31. 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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32. 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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33. Thank you!
    @stephenhay
    

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