Fidelity decisions

Once we start prototyping, we quickly find out that we need to decide to what degree of fidelity we need to make our prototype. Fidelity refers to the degree of realism in our prototype. The level of fidelity needed will change throughout a project. In the early stages of a project, lower fidelity prototypes are acceptable to quickly iterate on ideas. As we advance our design through the project, higher levels of fidelity will better inform stakeholders what the final product will look like. It's always important to understand what the purpose of a prototype is before making decisions about fidelity so it has the appropriate level of design, but not too much. A prototype with close-to-final layouts, graphics, and color schemes is considered high fidelity. One that is more wireframe-like and less polished is considered low fidelity. There is no correct approach to take. We need to ask ourselves what questions we are trying to answer and what degree of fidelity will help us to answer them.

We usually don't want to develop our prototypes beyond the degree of fidelity we need for our purpose, because an Axure prototype will never be the start of any production code development effort. That's not to say all prototypes are throw-away works, as we may update them many times over the course of a long project; but prototyping more functionally than you need for the test or demonstration you are preparing is usually not advisable.

Fortunately, Axure allows us to prototype at any degree of fidelity we choose, and even includes a Page Style setting that lets us create prototypes with a sketchy effect. Page Style settings in Axure allow us to create prototypes with low-fidelity sketchy effects, so viewers of the prototype won't think they are looking at a finished design. The following screenshot illustrates this:

Some typical questions we need to answer at this point in the process are:

The answers to these questions are going to determine the level of fidelity you need and should be answered before you start the actual prototyping work.