The Fidelity Quotient

Crosspost: https://medium.com/@Infotrix/the-fidelity-quotient-8c65694edc12

In the past, I’ve prided myself on my attention-to-detail skills. Four years of Jr. ROTC, six years in the military, and five years of university art classes honed my detailing skills to an absurd degree. But recently I was put on the spot when showing a rapid prototype of some new project features.

“Why are these files in here?” the client asked, clearly frustrated. It was a valid question and show-stopper.

“That’s only placeholder text to represent the interactive list.” I tried to clarify. He knew that duh. The concept was understood. He wanted implicit contextual details filled out so he could learn the new concepts. In his mind, the prototype was a working idea and he wanted to know why I had put dumb files into the system.

I thought the mocked-up placeholder text was good enough but it made the client stumble and lose focus of the meaning (features) of the prototype. Had those details been in high-fidelity they would have been invisible and there would have been nothing for the client to stumble on before I got to show the new feature.

We lost valuable time because I cut corners and neglected to look at the prototype through the clients’ eyes. What is good enough for me to understand was insufficient for him and that misunderstanding could have easily been avoided. It would have taken ten minutes to fill in exact file names and metadata. I failed to satisfy the fidelity quotient and it wasn’t good enough.

“Good enough” is a mantra we hear from various think groups and a mental model that makes the design industry rounds every few years. I’ve seen this way of working increase software time-to-live to nearly the speed of light. However, “good enough” in rapid prototyping doesn’t mean skimp on fidelity. It’s an unassuming thing to say but what is good enough is only good enough if your ideas are understood. Good enough often, perhaps always, means high-fidelity.

Being invisible really matters. During military inspections, if your belt was misaligned the inspector would check the inside of your hat for stray threads and then look under your shoes for scuffs on your souls. It was a vortex of misery once the drill instructors smelled blood. By the time they moved to their next victim you had no doubt being invisible would have been better.

When drawing, if a line is incorrect, perspective could be off leading to composition problems and misinterpretation. The meaning can often be lost behind low-fidelity elements of an artwork. Some artists take this to the extreme and their art becomes conceptual in and of itself. These artworks are sometimes profound but are little more than thought experiments with vague resolve.

Fuzzy concepts are necessary to a point but I build products. And products are a focused realization of concepts, not the concepts themselves. Rapid prototypes are renditions of ideas with an objective towards understanding. More often than not, mutual understanding means getting out of the way and not tripping over yourself in the process. You can become invisible by filling in every detail.

Is it invisible to the user? Then it satisfies the fidelity quotient; my new favorite tool to save everyone’s time and avoid misunderstandings.