Lost in low fidelity? — Nr. 119

Low fidelity is awesome, but it can be overwhelming.

• Low fidelity is an exciting method. You can quickly visualize what’s in your head. The fuzzy idea becomes more concrete.

• It’s handy when I’m designing a complex interaction. Let’s use Google Maps as an example. What happens when the user clicks the search bar? What information should we show here?

• Low fidelity is decisive in this scenario because we can explore alternatives, assess them, and decide.

• Lately, I have become more effective in using low fidelity.

• In the past, I usually think, “OK, let me sketch and figure it out from there.” The problem? I ended up exploring or thinking about irrelevant things.

• Now? I create the interaction scope first. Let me explain.

• Let’s say we’re designing a label feature in Gmail. This feature is intended to help people group similar emails together. Maybe you want to group emails related to “finance” or “traveling”.

• Then, I will start with the interaction scope. In practice, I list things like this:

  • Create a label

  • Assign a label to an email

  • Remove a label from an email

  • Delete the label

• It’s straightforward. You have a different list of “things” users can do. This is a better starting point because now I can spend 30 minutes sketching low fidelity to solve: What does the interaction look like when users want to create a label? You can use the given-when-then framework to help you think.