Low Fidelity Design
UX Design
What is Low Fidelity Design
Low Fidelity Design (Lo-Fi) refers to simple, rough sketches or wireframes that represent basic layout and functionality. It focuses on core concepts and structure rather than visual design details, using basic shapes and placeholder content.
Types of Low Fidelity Design
Common formats include:
- Paper Sketches: Hand-drawn layouts and flows
- Basic Wireframes: Simple digital outlines
- Paper Prototypes: Physical mockups for interaction testing
- Whiteboard Drawings: Quick collaborative sketches
When to use Low Fidelity Design
Use Lo-Fi designs during early ideation phases, when exploring multiple concepts quickly, gathering initial feedback, or communicating basic layout ideas. It's particularly valuable for rapid iteration and early stakeholder alignment.
Benefits of Low Fidelity Design
This approach enables quick iteration, encourages feedback on structure rather than aesthetics, reduces design investment in unproven concepts, and helps teams focus on solving core user problems before considering visual details.
Include only enough detail to communicate core concepts and facilitate discussion. If you're spending time on visual refinement, you're probably going too detailed.
Transition when you've validated basic layout and functionality, received stakeholder approval on core concepts, and need to test specific visual or interaction details.
Yes, but set proper expectations about their purpose. Explain that you're testing concepts and structure, not final visual design, and guide users to focus on functionality over appearance.
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