People usually explain low-fi technology as a shortage. Not enough money, not enough time, users on cheap phones. Something you would fix if you could.
A tool in <i>Design Journeys through Complex Systems</i>, by Peter Jones and Kristel Van Ael, changed how I see this. It is called Three Horizons, and it takes about ten minutes to learn.
The three horizons, in short
You draw three curves on one timeline. The first is the current system: it works today and slowly declines. The third is the future you want, which barely exists yet. The second sits between them. It rises, does its job, and then fades away.
That second curve is meant to be temporary. It is not a small version of the future. It is a bridge, and a bridge is supposed to be crossed and left behind.
Where low fidelity fits
Most low-fi tech is a second-horizon tool that people mistake for a bad first draft of the third.
An SMS service is not a failed app. On a weak network, on a phone with no data plan, it is the thing that works right now. A voice note is not a text box for people who cannot type. It is the channel that fits someone who would rather listen than read, on a phone the whole family shares.
Getting this wrong changes how you build. If you treat the paper form as a rough draft, you rush past it. If you know it is the bridge, you design it well, you plan its retirement, and you ask the real question: what has to change before we no longer need it?
The two labels worth reading twice
The Three Horizons sheet has two labels on its edge. <i>Elements of the current system we can reuse.</i> And <i>elements of the current system we need to sustain.</i>
Both assume the current system holds things worth keeping. Most new technology assumes the opposite. It arrives planning to replace everything, and treats the register a community already keeps, or the person everyone already asks, as obstacles instead of assets.
A third label points the same way: <i>pockets of the future in the present</i>. Somewhere, somebody is already doing a version of what you want. Finding them is cheaper than inventing it.
An example from my own work
The volunteer network app on this site was built for a large network across a country of many languages. Seen through Three Horizons, almost every choice in it is a second-horizon choice.
The language switch sits in the header, because the choice has to come before the screen is readable. A task is proved with a geo-tag and a photo, because a photo is the evidence people already have. The feed has a one-tap poll and voice notes. Sharing works outside the app, because the group chat is where the group already is.
None of these are compromises on the way to something better. They are parts of the current system, reused on purpose.