Lo-fi design is beautiful.

Change happens quickly in product design because websites, software, and apps are constantly evolving. This can create tension around how much polish we should deliver. I believe this stems from an unhealthy obsession with detail, which is perfectly healthy to suspend from time to time.

So, here's the thing: you don’t always have to be so detail-oriented. Maybe you could even be a little sloppy from time to time. Go live a little!

I'll be the first to admit that I've gotten caught up in the details. Maybe with good reason, as designers are judged when details are missed, and rewarded when we catch them all. Attention to detail is our reason to feel like impostors, and our rationale for acting like pretentious fools.

In music, lo-fi is a great thing. Some of the best music ever created is lo-fi. Consider the song “Anytime You Want” by Eric’s Trip:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMJT1U4n9Zk

"Anytime You Want" was recorded on a 4-track in a basement, yet it's a great song. The melody propels you through the lyrics and the simple guitar riff is crusty, infectious, and thrashy. It makes me want to be at a basement party with sweaty partygoers dancing around.

I'll be honest — my college years wouldn't be the same without this Eric's Trip album. I learned guitar to this album, went through breakups to this album, learned darkroom photography to this album. Eric's Trip put ideas out quickly, making a deep impression without much polish.

Granted, songs are very different from software. But music can span a similar range of polish. Songs like "Anytime you want" could be seen as a sketch of a more fleshed-out composition that will happen later, whereas "Bohemian Rhapsody" by Queen could be seen as a state-of-the-art recording technology and modern polish.

Here's another lo-fi classic, "Sweet Home Chicago" recorded by Robert Johnson in an Austin hotel room in 1936. Who the hell knows what this was recorded with... it really doesn't matter.

Circumstances didn't stop Johnson from publishing his recording, and it definitely didn't stop the world from picking up this song and re-recording it for the next 80 years.

Lo-fi doesn't mean low quality; it's simply a means of putting ideas out there and being okay with how naked new ideas can be. The web and software, as a medium, have made it completely free to put ideas out there; there is no price of admission nowadays. We can push code to Git, post photos to Instagram, write a post on Medium.

The fact of the matter is we don't know what is going to be a great idea or a great design when it comes to users. We can guess, we can use our research or experience, but without putting something out there, we're never going to know. I might even go so far as to say: stop trying to have good ideas, and just have shipped ideas — You can always record another track.

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