In an
earlier blog post, Roger said:
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Therefore, I assumed that many users of Lucid Spec would request a low fidelity option to automatically morph all screens into a simple black and white style. I assumed wrong. In fact, not one user has requested this feature. I'm not really sure why this is. Are low fidelity prototypes something that you should do, but don't? Do people that create low fidelity prototypes only use paper? It remains a mystery to me.
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There's good evidence (e.g. [1]) that low and high fidelity prototyping are basically equivalent in terms of finding usability issues, and low fidelity is much, much faster. On the other hand, other authors [2] recommend high-fidelity prototypes because they sell better to management & other stakeholders.
I think this is a key distinction - low fidelity is most efficient for finding & resolving problems, but high fidelity is most effective for persuading stakeholders.
I also think many people don't recognize the power of low fidelity prototyping. I recently led a workshop on prototyping for computing faculty and students. In one of the workshop activities, teams of participants spend 10 minutes creating a paper prototype, and 5-10 minutes reviewing it with a member of another team. Many of them were surprised by the issues and ideas that came up in such a short time. This is especially difficult for experienced programmers - we're conditioned to pay attention to little syntax details in our code, and it's hard to break such habits and create a quick and dirty prototype.
References
1. Miriam Walker, Leila Takayama, and James Landsey.
High-fidelity or low-fidelity, paper or computer? Choosing attributes when testing web prototypes.
Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society (HFES) 46th Annual Meeting, 661-665, 2002.
2. Jim Rudd and Scott Isensee.
Twenty-two tips for a happier, healthier prototype.
Interactions 1(1):35-40, 1994.
