The Benefits of Prototyping & Why You Should develop It

Dec 09 , 2022 | Blog

The Benefits of Prototyping & Why You Should develop It

“Design adds value faster than it adds costs.” – Joel Spolsky, Creator of Trello

What is prototyping?

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. It is the fourth step of the design thinking process, followed by usability testing.

A prototype is an interactive mock-up of a product.

It enables us to deliver a tangible concept to the client, with a relatively quick turn-around time.

What are these benefits then?

Well, I could go on for pages about why I believe prototyping is so beneficial to us.

Speed: Building a prototype means that we can test out a multitude of ideas. Prototypes can be built much faster and can be delivered to clients at the earliest stage, which increases the speed during the feedback phase.

Communication: Historically, you’d be providing your client with a tonne of supporting documentation, explaining the functions, structures, product life and etc. Not only does someone have to write those notes, the client has to read them, before fully understanding the amazing concept you’ve just designed. With prototyping, there’s little need for such documentation. All can be easily communicated through the prototype itself.

Testing: By all accounts, your prototype is like a practice-run before sending it out into the big wide-world and giving it to your clients. It’s your baby, you’ve worked hard on it – you don’t want it to fail before it’s even begun. With prototyping you can send the tool out to clients and the rest of your team. By utilising this approach, any areas that don’t work or seem complicated, can be picked up during this early stage, before any backend build has begun.