Drawing on walls: Lo-fi prototype sketching’s quick, cheap AND good
Make it easy on yourself, save time and show the client something inexpensive. Sound good? Then lo-fi prototyping is the way to go. To be honest, “lo-fi prototyping” is a very fancy way of saying start with rough sketches before putting effort and client’s expense into beautiful high quality prototypes or wireframes.
I’m not going to teach you to suck eggs, as by this point, you should be able to use pens and paper but there are a few tricks that’ll make things work for you:
- If you can’t draw, make your concepts simple and use them as presentation aids or aide-mémoire rather than standalone documents
- If you can draw, don’t get drawn into the trap of spending just as much time producing things of true beauty that a client will want to take a red pen to (teacher style)
- Unless you’re producing a creative concept that needs lots of colour, keep it to monochrome with a few highlights – it’s quicker and clearer
- Aim for simplicity and clarity: If your sketch is getting complicated, it might be time to rethink what you’re trying to communicate, or that you might actually need to do some digitally produced pieces
- Get the client involved. If you can run a workshop where the client helps draw or modify sketches they’ll articulate more – and love you more too
- Lo-fi is quick, easy and – from a client’s perspective – cheap. Never underestimate the power of inexpensive in these financially strained times.
As well as sketches for presenting ideas, like the image on the right showing initial lo-fi andeventual funtional wireframe, I’ve also found lo-fi techniques excellent for experimenting with different interaction designs. And in English, what I mean is that if I’m trying to work out how buttons, drop downs and other ‘things that do things’ work on a webpage (before handing it over to a terribly clever techie to actually make happen), bits of paper and rough sketches do very for trying out ideas.
But…
For my favourite lo-fi design and workshop tool is Magic Whiteboard. Not one of those electronic smart boards, but flipchart sized sheets of wipe-clean plastic film that stick to just about any surface, by static. Trying to work out how to fit a lot of information into a few screens, brought about a series of sketches that I photographed and plopped onto PowerPoint to make a presentation flick book. And I can tell you, demo-ing these, with a colleague doing the page down, while I ‘clicked’ on the radio buttons and drop downs on the screens makes for quick and fun prototyping. Open the 350kb PPT and page and downin slideshow mode to see what I mean.
Now got get some of your own fat pens and get scribbling.
The Long Dog.