2. What is?
Prototyping is a process in which design teams ideate, experiment with, and bring concepts to life,
ranging from paper ideas to digital designs. At its core, a prototype is an early sample of a design
that allows users to visualize or interact with it before a final product is developed.
3. Key Characteristic
A key characteristic of prototyping is that prototypes are created without a single line of code.
There are plenty of prototyping tools to help designers link together artboards, creating an
interactive, clickable experience without the need of a developer.
4. Reasons for prototyping
With prototyping, designers can explore alternative design solutions with zero development effort.
They can also test their prototypes on real users to discover usability issues before releasing a final
product.
5. Some reasons to prototype include:
Exploring new ideas. Prototypes allow designers
to experiment with various ideas and solutions.
They give the designer freedom to test multiple
potential scenarios, while adjusting along the
way to optimize the usability of the end product.
Discovering problems. Prototypes are a great
way to further understand the problem the user
is facing. They empower designers to better
understand the product or system by literally
engaging with them and observing what works
and what doesn’t.
Identifying usability issues. Creating prototypes
for users to interact with is a great way to
identify issues surrounding the usability of your
product. This will allow the designer to make
necessary changes prior to development.
Engaging stakeholders and end users.
Prototypes allow designers to engage with
stakeholders and end users, which gives them
the chance to become involved in the process
and feel a sense of ownership. This will
potentially aid in their “buy-in” and help push
the concept forward faster.
6. Here are the steps of an effective website
prototyping process.
Select features to test.
Select the key features you want to test on users. It is impossible to effectively test all features of your
product in one session. Therefore, pinpoint key features you wish to spotlight in this discovery session.
Create your design prototype.
Create your website prototype to exemplify those key features and flows identified in the previous step.
Test your solution.
Observe and record them interacting with your product, taking note of any usability issues in the current
design.
Make updates to resign.
After your testing session, synthesize your feedback into key takeaways and update your designs accordingly.
Repeat the process.
Finally, bring your updated website design back to users and repeat this process.