As an industry that claims to embrace early-stage, low-fidelity design, it’s somewhat ironic that we all feel pressured into using Moleskines that cost 20 cents per page, and pens intended for high value artwork and technical drawings. The process of externalising your thoughts doesn’t need to be dressed up as something it isn’t. There’s nothing I hate more than fake-sketched wireframes, with their too-perfect right angles, cross-hatching and typography. Painstaking perfection is the opposite of what low-fi is all about. If it hasn’t got bits scribbled out then sorry, I don’t buy it.
In the last 5 years of writing and designing, some of my best work started out as scrawls in a crappy school exercise book that I bought from a supermarket in Mexico. I used a bic biro most of the time. My writing was barely legible but it was good enough. Sometimes your best ideas start out as crappy half-baked ideas that don’t deserve Moleskine paper, but they do deserve writing down immediately or you’ll lose them.
Anyway, Real UXers don’t use Moleskines…
