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Prototyping: Low Fidelity vs High Fidelity

Nov 11, 2020 2:30:00 PM

Designers discussing application user interfaceBack in the 1960s, the term “hi-fi” (short for “high-fidelity”) was a popular buzzword. It started innocently enough as a term to describe the greater sound quality available from high-end stereophonic home audio equipment. But the term caught on in the marketing world and suddenly everything with a perceived elevated quality was known as “hi-fi.”

Nobody calls home stereo components (or anything else) “hi-fi” anymore, thank goodness. Even its more recent cousin, “high-definition,” has fallen out of common use. Thus, the term “high-fidelity” can return to its true meaning: to describe any faithful representation of an artifact, be it sound, video, graphics, or what have you.

In software development, the term “high-fidelity” (and its counterpart, “low-fidelity”) have come to describe approaches to prototyping. In this article we discuss the differences between high-fidelity and low-fidelity prototyping, the pros and cons of each approach, and when you might choose one over the other.

Prototypes and Fidelity

As discussed previously in this blog, a prototype is a mockup of a user interface (UI). UI prototypes are typically used in software development, but hardware prototypes are often built as well. For this article, we focus on software prototypes.

Prototyping is important in software development for many reasons:

  • Early prototyping can save the development team from making costly changes later in the development cycle.
  • Prototypes can be reviewed with the customer endusers to validate their requirements are understood and the development team is on the right track.
  • Prototyping review exercises can keep the endusers engaged in the project, giving them a sense of ownership in the design and avoiding unpleasant surprises in the final product.

The fidelity of a prototype is how close it comes to matching the real thing:

  • High-fidelity prototypes are on-screen representations of the UI. They are interactive; clicking or tapping a button or link causes the prototype to do something. There is no program logic or data behind the prototype, but the representation is faithful enough to give viewers a close idea of what the actual UI will look like and how it will behave.
  • Low-fidelity prototypes are often no more than sketches done by hand on paper, cardboard, or a whiteboard. This approach is often known as “paper prototyping.”

Some in the software development world describe a third, “medium-fidelity” approach, which falls somewhere between the others. For our discussion, we will stick with the two extremes.

Pros and Cons of Each Approach

Low-fidelity prototypes have certain advantages over their high-fidelity counterparts:

  • Low-fidelity prototypes are inexpensive to produce, with only a pencil and paper or a whiteboard and markers and require only kindergarten-level drawing skills.
  • They can be produced and modified quickly in response to customer feedback. For this reason, they are often used in rapid prototyping.

However, low-fidelity prototypes do leave a bit to be desired. It’s difficult to represent the behavior of a complex UI or task with a low-fidelity prototype, and it may be difficult for audiences to envision how the end product will work. Thus, it’s hard for them to give anything more than high-level, general feedback.

By contrast, high-fidelity prototypes overcome those disadvantages:

  • They can more faithfully represent the actual UI. Because of this, the final prototype design can often be used as the exact model for the developer to follow when building the real UI in code.
  • Audiences can get a better idea of the actual UI and can provide more specific feedback to make refinements.

However, high-fidelity prototypes take some time and expertise to produce. Although many robust tools exist to produce high-fidelity prototypes, each one has some kind of learning curve that must be overcome for users to make effective use of it.

For this reason, these tools are often used by higher-priced UI or user-experience (UX) designers, whereas almost anyone on the team can do a low-fidelity prototype. In addition, some tools are more easily applied than others to rapid prototyping (that is, on-the-spot changes made in immediate response to audience feedback).

Which Approach is ‘Better?’

As you might expect, each approach has its uses depending on the circumstance.

Low-fidelity prototypes are appropriate for the early stages of prototyping when the development team and customer are throwing ideas around to zero-in on a preliminary design. You don’t want to waste time and high-priced expertise on building a fancy interactive early prototype that the customer ends up rejecting right away.

High-fidelity prototypes are better for the later stages of prototyping after the stakeholders have settled on a general approach from the low-fidelity prototypes. At this stage, it’s worth the effort to build an interactive prototype that the customers can get their hands on and play around with; they can then ask better questions about the functionality and provide more detailed feedback. The result should be a solid UI design that can be implemented without guesswork.

Unless the UI design is almost trivial (in which case low-fidelity prototyping might be sufficient), most app development projects should make use of both low-fidelity and high-fidelity prototyping.

The important thing is that prototyping, regardless of fidelity, should not be overlooked; it is an important component of the development cycle and dramatically improves the chances of a successful product.

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Topics: Prototyping

Matt Hull

Written by Matt Hull

Matt leads AndPlus' creative and user experience practice and his focus on human-centered design has been honed over the course of his 20+ year career in web development. With experience across a wide range of industries and technologies, Matt’s ability to keep the user at the forefront, while serving their needs through technology, is a vital component to every client solution. Matt and his team bring passion, creativity, and innovation to every client project and, ultimately, to every user experience.

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