The Power of Demos

As designers, we’re constantly adapting to the ever-changing landscape of product design. In this fast-paced world, it’s essential to prioritize communication and collaboration. I’m firm believer that demos add more communication value compared to traditional presentations, particularly when moving beyond initial prototyping stages.

The Value of Low-Fidelity Wireframes in Ideation

During ideation, low-fidelity wireframes are a game-changer. They allow us to quickly explore multiple ideas without getting bogged down in details. These rough sketches and wireframes help trim down an array of concepts to the most promising ones, giving us a clear direction to follow.

Low-fidelity artifacts excel for presentations during early stages, when uncertainty is high. They facilitate discussions, gather feedback, and align team members on potential directions. The focus here is on conveying ideas and concepts rather than showcasing functionality.

Once the team agrees on the ideas to pursue, it’s time to shift gears. I advocate for moving from static presentations to interactive demos. As designers, we should ensure that subsequent stages involve demonstrating the solution in action. This approach provides a tangible experience of the product’s functionality, usability, and interaction design.

With tools like Figma constantly evolving, prototyping has become an exciting and efficient part of the design process. Prototyping isn’t just about creating static images; it’s now an integral step that brings ideas to life. By creating interactive prototypes, we allow stakeholders to experience the product firsthand, making feedback more grounded and actionable.

Embracing demos over presentations offers several benefits:

• Demos provide a real-time look at how the product works, reducing misunderstandings that can arise from static images or descriptions.

• They force designers to think through user interactions, transitions, and animations, often overlooked in static designs.

• By simulating the user experience, potential problems can be identified and addressed earlier in the process.

In my own journey, I’ve learned that relying solely on presentations can lead to misalignments. For instance, a memory comes to mind when my Product Manager received user feedback on an interaction’s behavior that differed from my expectations. Without a demo to illustrate this, the nuances were lost in translation.

We ultimately adopted an interaction pattern familiar to users from competing products, but it highlighted the importance of using demos to convey intricate design decisions effectively.

I think that it’s essential that we adapt to changing landscape of design tools and processes. By integrating engineering practices into our workflow—like building functional prototypes—we expand our horizons beyond static images.

This evolution prepares us to tackle misalignments proactively and ensures that our designs are both beautiful and functional.

In a world where change is the only constant, shifting from presentations to demos in product design prototyping is a step towards more effective communication and better products. By doing so, we not only enhance our design process but also deliver more value to our teams and users.