What are design comps?

- [Instructor] If you hang around a product development team…long enough, you'll undoubtedly hear the term design comp…being used to describe pictures of the interface.…The term comp is short for comprehensive…or sometimes composition layout.…Back when everything was done manually,…designers would go through four main stages…of an illustration, like a poster or advertisement.…First, the designer would sketch out several ideas…then choose one to take to the next stage, layout.…

The layout would show how each part of the image…would fit on the page.…The comp would tidy up the layout…and use stock images and clean text…rather than sketches for the components on the page.…The comp would be used to get agreement…from everyone involved…before the designer created the finished design.…Nowadays, in interface design,…we follow a similar pattern.…We move from sketches to wire frames to comps to code.…Comps are higher fidelity than wire frames.…

They're visual representations…of how the interface will actually look on screens…