Summary
In this sponsored session, Billy Carlson, a Design Educator from Balsamiq, will walk through how to use low fidelity designs combined with storytelling to convince product leadership to green light your next big product or feature idea.
Key Insights
-
•
Staying in low-fidelity wireframes during early concept phases enables quicker iteration and focused problem-solving.
-
•
Collaborative sketching sessions with multiple rounds build trust and generate stronger, shared concepts.
-
•
Using thick markers for sketching helps keep ideas high-level and prevents premature focus on details.
-
•
Wireframes should be crafted digitally to look polished and presentable, even if low fidelity.
-
•
Leveraging existing UI patterns or design system components maintains consistency and speeds up wireframe creation.
-
•
Presenting wireframes within the full context of the product and user flow aids stakeholder understanding.
-
•
Leaving ambiguous areas in wireframes as question marks encourages constructive feedback and discussions.
-
•
Storytelling in presentations, including personas, problem statements, and business impact, improves stakeholder buy-in.
-
•
Content design should be integrated early during wireframe development, pairing writers with designers.
-
•
Low-fidelity wireframes can and should be created by non-designers with the right tools and team collaboration.
Notable Quotes
"Staying in low fidelity throughout this early concept development phase allows for really strict focus on the problem slash solution space."
"Wire frames plus a little bit of storytelling is awesome."
"There’s nothing aesthetic to grab onto, so you’re not gonna be focusing on type styles, fonts, colors, photos."
"I want your sketching to be really high level—I want you to explore concepts, not refine content."
"Low fidelity does not mean low quality."
"If you don’t know what should go in a specific area, it is really powerful to leave it as a question mark."
"Tell a story of design: start with the background, introduce the users, demonstrate how it will work."
"Be very clear on exactly what type of feedback you’re looking for because you’re gonna get a lot better feedback."
"I find the existing patterns in my product and use those because it’s easier to bring things back in."
"Non-designers can build wireframes really quickly using easy drag-and-drop components from a design system."
Or choose a question:
More Videos
"Confidence is a higher burden in retail because people are giving real money; inaccessible flows cause quick abandonment."
Sam ProulxOnline Shopping: Designing an Accessible Experience
June 7, 2023
"Career managers develop close relationships with designers and advocate for staffing and promotions on their behalf."
Ignacio MartinezFair and Effective Designer Evaluation
September 25, 2024
"Transformation is new ways of thinking and eventually doing; we won’t have all the answers at the start and that’s okay."
Sarah Kinkade Mariana Ortiz-ReyesDesign Management Models in the Face of Transformation
June 8, 2022
"The Shakers’ artifacts allowed moments of silence and moments of song—balancing rationality with spirit in design."
Daniel GloydWarming the User Experience: Lessons from America's first and most radical human-centered designers
May 9, 2024
"Journalists like me are in the business of interrogating reality to get at the truth."
Patrick BoehlerFishing for Real Needs: Reimagining Journalism Needs with AI
June 10, 2025
"AI-moderated interviews will help drill down on depth without sacrificing scalability or requiring scheduling moderators."
Andy Barraclough Betsy NelsonFrom Costly Complexity to Efficient Insights: Why UX Teams Are Switching To Voxpopme
September 23, 2024
"The future of our technology cannot and should not rest solely on the ethics of individual designers."
Alexandra SchmidtWhy Ethics Can't Save Tech
November 18, 2022
"You can’t lead without being a lifelong learner because when your company stops learning, it dies."
Louis RosenfeldDiscussion: What Operations can teach DesignOps
November 6, 2017
"We’re literally using AI to help AI build AI, including bias detection and correction in the process."
Mitchell BernsteinOrganizing Chaos: How IBM is Defining Design Systems with Sketch for an Ever-Changing AI Landscape
September 29, 2021
