Blog of Much Holding

I’ve read several different essays on methods on how to author early UI design concepts, and quite often I see somewhat rancorous debate over the fidelity that is needed or is appropriate for such designs. I’ll try and summarize the different points I have read:

• If the design looks too realistic, then project stakeholders will “glom onto” the design and be resistant to change, even if usability tests show that the design doesn’t work or has issues.
• If the design is too “sketchy” then users you expose the design too will be distracted by the lack of branding.
• If the design looks to realistic the user you test the screens with will be distracted by the branding and not focus on the task(s) you are testing.
• If the design is not interactive you will not get realistic feedback and accurate results from users around any interaction models you are testing.

And so on. There’s little to no consensus as far as I can see, and that’s for a reason. In my humble opinion they are all correct statements… keeping context and personal preferences in mind.

I have found that you cannot be dogmatic about how you approach doing UI design – you have to do what feels right for you. I know of one designer who does 90% of thier work on paper, sketching and revising and testing with nothing more than a pen and paper. That is FINE, because that person is able to do good work in a medium they are comfortable with.

You can probably understand by now the point I’m making, but allow me to pile on a couple of more examples. I, myself, am incredibly comfortable with “whiteboarding” designs and interaction models and then jumping immediately into Axure to create “sketches” of my early ideas – really more interactive prototypes than anything else. A former colleague of mine was the opposite – much more comfortable doing stuff in Photoshop or on paper. Was that person not as “good” a designer, because they could not create “rich interactive prototypes” at the same speed as me? Of course not. Again (and thank you Captain Obvious for bringing this to my attention), people are different.

So, how real should you make a design work before you expose it to review and revision? As real as you yourself need it to be, to make sure your vision of the design shines through.