How to think about fidelity

Welcome back. I'm really excited to how this year is finishing - and it's kicking my butt. Here's what's going on that you might like:

• New design livestream every Friday at 11AM PST (View last week's episode here)
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• UX Tools Design Tools Survey is ready for your input - please fill it out

I just want to say: thank you tremendously for your support. You are why we're able to continue providing news, annual survey results and education to this community.

Thank you.

—Tommy (@DesignerTom)

The Wireframe:

• When to invest into fidelity
• Tools that match your fidelity needs
• The fidelity decision framework

When (and How) to Level Up Your Design Fidelity

I've shipped products at both extremes:

• Rough wireframes that went straight to development
• Pixel-perfect mocks that took weeks to finalize

After 14 years, here's what I've learned: The "right" fidelity depends entirely on what you're trying to learn or communicate.

Let's break this down →

The Fidelity Framework

Think of fidelity like placing bets. Low fidelity is a small bet—quick to make, low risk, but might not tell the whole story. High fidelity is a bigger bet—more time invested, but potentially higher payoff.

Here's when to use each:

Low Fidelity is Best For:

• Early concept exploration
• Quick stakeholder alignment
• Testing basic user flows
• Rough technical feasibility checks

Real example: When building my startup StreamPro's analytics dashboard, we started with paper sketches. Why? Because we needed to validate if streamers even understood basic metrics before worrying about pretty graphs.

High Fidelity is Best For:

• Final design validation
• Developer handoff
• Stakeholder buy-in
• Design system components
• Marketing materials

Real example: For Quantcast's DSP redesign, we went high-fidelity early because the success metric was "feeling more enterprise." The visual polish was actually part of the product strategy.

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Picking Your Tools

Different fidelity needs = different tools for the job.

Here's what I recommend:

For Low Fidelity:

For Mid Fidelity:

For High Fidelity:

The Fidelity Decision Framework

Before you start designing, ask yourself:

1. What decisions need to be made?

• Layout decisions → Low fidelity
• Visual hierarchy → Mid fidelity
• Brand alignment → High fidelity

2. Who needs to understand the design?

• Developers → Mid fidelity + annotations
• Stakeholders → High fidelity + rationale
• Users → Depends on what you're testing

3. What's the cost of being wrong?

• High risk (like a new product) → Start low, iterate up
• Low risk (like a known pattern) → Match your design system

Dive deeper into how to think about fidelity in our new course Making UX Decisions:

• 60+ videos with hours of content
• 7+ mini-assessments
• 20+ UI checklists and patterns
• 7+ video lessons from product and design leaders
• A Notion cheatsheet

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Grab the course here.

Ask DesignerTom: The Fidelity Trap

Question: "I feel like I spend too much time perfecting my designs before showing them. How do I know when something is done enough?" —Sarah K.

Answer: This is what I call the fidelity trap. Here's my rule of thumb:

Your design is "done enough" when it answers the current question being asked. Nothing more.

Example:

• "Will users understand this flow?" → Low-fi wireframe is enough
• "Does this match our brand?" → You need high-fi mockups
• "Can we build this?" → Mid-fi with annotations works

The key is matching your fidelity to your goals. And remember: You can always increase fidelity later, but you can't get back time spent on unnecessary polish.

See you next week,

Tommy

Thanks for reading! What's your favorite tool for organizing info? Hit reply and let me know.

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