What is Prototyping?
Prototyping is an essential part of design. Built for demonstration and validation, a prototype can be simple sketches, wireframes, models, or some other manifestation to evaluate the concept and save the cost of developing a flawed product/service. Reviewing the concept with the developers, the stakeholders and most importantly, the target users, is an important step in minimizing risk and costs, while collecting feedback for further innovation.
What Are the Benefits?
A prototype is simply the best way to share, communicate and collect feedback on your design when it is still possible to make changes.
We use prototypes to…
- Show main interactions, specifying the locations of major sections and levels of navigation
- Validate design choices with developers and key stakeholders
- Gather rapid feedback and user impressions on design concepts
- Eliminate design errors
When to Use It?
Prototype sooner than later.
What’s the right moment to prototype when designing for digital products? Like much many design approaches, you need start as soon as possible and you can’t stop until you are confident about the solution you are proposing. Throughout the creative process, the purpose of your prototype will evolve, and so should its actual manifestation.
At the brainstorming stage, you may simply be trying to communicate and get feedback about specific ideas from your peers with a couple of hand-drawn sketches. However, later in the process, you may be hoping to perform a more serious evaluation of low or high-fidelity prototypes with real users. When prototypes become sufficiently advanced, testing with customers becomes extremely valuable.
What we Deliver?
Depending on the related factors (e.g. project phase, product, target users,..), we would deliver one or more of the following:
- A low-fidelity prototype
- An intermediate medium-fidelity prototype
- A high-fidelity prototype
- Validated interactions and interface specifications with sufficient detail to guide developers to build the system.
If you need a prototype that behaves as close as possible to how the final product is supposed to behave, you’ll need to dedicate more time to it, possibly even getting your hands dirty and writing some code!