Design your way

You could have the best or the worst design idea, but you’ve no way of knowing which until you see it in action.

That’s where prototyping is a big help. Prototyping helps bridge the gap between your design concept and the ready-to-go product.

Prototyping shows you early on what works and what doesn’t. It gives you the ability to explore options and iterations that can speed up the design process. Also, it provides you with an opportunity to deliver the best possible product.

There’s no shortage of prototyping tools, and picking the right one can be a gamble. Limit your choice to one that supports rapid iterations, and does so with ease, and you’ll be fine.

3 of the best:

Proto.io

Proto.io is the perfect prototyping tool for designers, entrepreneurs, developers, and product managers. Whether you want to create a low-fidelity prototype, wireframe, or mockup to illustrate a design concept and solicit feedback, or build a high-fidelity prototype of a web or mobile app that looks and feels like the real thing makes no difference as far as this useful tool is concerned.

It’s easy to use, and requires no coding or design skills; so you can get started building a prototype right out of the box.

You’ll quickly discover how easy it is to build animated, interactive prototypes for user testing and design signoff prior to product development. Proto.io allows you to conduct design, prototyping, previewing, testing, and collaborating from a single platform.

The new latest version, Proto.io 6, has a number of nice features, including an intuitive, easier to use interface, single-click sharing to share your prototypes with key stakeholders, new state transitions, and new apps for iOS and Android for viewing your prototypes on the intended device, as well as on your web browser.

Design Systems by UXPin

UXPin is more than a prototyping tool – it’s a full-stack UX design platform.

You can prototype, create a design system, and generate documentation in one place. It’s the only product we’ve seen that isn’t just useful for prototyping, but handles the entire design process.

Useful features include:

1. Design systems + automatic documentation

Create a design system with Sketch or UXPin assets. You can set Symbols that auto-update everywhere. Add documentation to design systems elements (like code snippets). When you update the documentation, the changes sync across projects.

2. Developer handoffs

Auto-generate specs, CSS code, and style guides for designs in UXPin or from Sketch.

3.Powerful prototyping + integration with Sketch/Photoshop

Includes thousands of built-in elements, built-in interactions, custom interactions, and custom animations.

4. Design collaboration

You can co-design in the same file in real-time and assign feedback to people.

Fluid UI

Fluid UI is a wireframing, mockup, and prototyping tool well suited for a wide range of users including designers, product managers and entrepreneurs.

Features include built-in component libraries for wireframing, material design, web, and iOS. You can also upload existing designs. Testing on mobile is facilitated by using their dedicated Android and iOS apps.

Communication and collaboration is one of Fluid UI’s biggest strengths. Use integrated video hangouts and collaboration to share information with product owners, fellow designers and developers without ever having to leave the tool.

Fluid UI offers a “free forever” plan for a single project up to 10 pages in size. Solo and Pro plans allow 5 or 10 projects, respectively; unlimited pages and uploads, and access to all libraries. The Team plan can be used for an unlimited number of projects and live team collaboration.

Users include Dell, eBay, MasterCard, Oracle, Samsung, Symantec, and Google.

Why Prototyping is so Important

You may be tempted to dive into a project and start creating your design. However, it’s always prudent to periodically test your ideas from the beginning of the process to the end. You need to ensure you’ll accomplish your design goals.

Prototyping helps ensure you’ll deliver a product design that looks good. At the same time, it will admirably serve its purpose.

Prototyping gives you greater insight as to how your design is progressing. It also provides you with heads up should your design approach, or the design itself, need to be modified.

1. Define, refine, and evolve.

Prototyping can sometimes appear to be a tedious process. But it’s invariably an immensely beneficial one. It involves building a progression of prototypes. You can work your way through your design’s requirements at the same time.

Rapid prototyping is an excellent vehicle for speeding up the design process. It also is a great way to ensure the final iteration closely resembles the intended product.

2. See what works, and what doesn’t

Brilliant ideas sometimes fall flat when attempting to translated them into effective designs. Prototyping provides an excellent way to uncover those “fatal flaws” that can set a project back to ground zero, and can also assist in finding a remedy. These flaws typically become visible during low-fi prototyping.

3. Identify problems that would have been missed.

Not all problems fall in the fatal flaw category. Some issues go undetected until it’s time for the development team to take over. Other come up after a product goes into production. These can be costly to troubleshoot and fix.

4. Collaborate and communicate

Prototyping speeds up the design process and condenses it as well. Therefore, it prevents the need for excessive communication and consultation. Since changes can be made on the fly, you’ll avoid the delays inherent in phone tag or communicating via email.

Conclusion

Prototyping is more than a design aide – it often speeds up the design process.

However, its value lies in the ease in which design errors or irregularities can be caught early on. Rapid prototyping works best when combined with real-time collaboration. It eliminates the need for excessive communicating to get feedback or resolve issues.

The 3 tools presented here are extremely user-friendly. Each will enable you to progress quickly from design concept buy-in. It leads you straight to user testing and design buy-off.

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