Prototyping continues our UX journey into building a great experience. In the Design Phase, we’ve sketched ideas and translated them into wireframes. We’ve shown those to our team and possibly our clients and stakeholders. Now it’s time to take these to the next step and add interactivity – or simulate it – to clearly show them how our design works!
The Benefits of Prototyping
Prototyping is a great way to further explore ideas generated in sketches or wireframes. Watch people use low-fidelity prototypes to see what does and doesn’t seem to work.
Prototyping helps you clearly convey solutionsto your team or client. A simple interactive prototype makes your idea tangible. It can also be a great sales tool.
Prototypes are quick to create in either paper or digital format. Just use your wireframes to ‘play computer’ for a paper prototype, or animate them for an interactive digital experience. If you base your prototypes on your wireframes, they’ll be at the same level of fidelity, which should match your idea of how complete your design is…
Prototypes are easy to change. You can even modify paper prototypes on the fly!
Prototyping is necessary for testing and validating ideas with users. They support the test portion of the Ideate, Prototype, and Test cycle.
Prototyping is efficient and thrifty. It can save your team time and money that might have been wasted developing an unusable solution.
Whether they are paper or interactive digital artifacts, prototypes provide the setting for usability testing. They allow you to communicate and test your solution’s: