Posted on Feb 15, 2016 on Create Hub, here. Using Prototypes to Test Ideas
What is prototyping and why is it so important in software development? Samuel Fry explains why he feels that prototyping is key to the success of many projects. My day job involves creating software. This might be in the form of a website, an app or another digital experience. The problem with designing software is that everyone has a different idea of what is needed. You might have a designer that is cemented to one idea or various people within the business that have different priorities. Then there are your users who, after all, are the reason that you are creating the thing in the first place. Let’s run through a scenario… What happens when you don’t test your ideas earlyUser A says to a software development team that they want this “awesome new technology” for people to use. The software development team agrees and says, “Sounds great! we’ll start building it!” A couple of months later, having worked tirelessly to create this technology, the software development team goes back to User A and says, “Here is that awesome new technology that you asked for!” Yet, it’s not quite right. User A says, “It looks pretty ugly. How do you even use this?” The software development team agree, it could have been designed better, but that’s no problem. “Give me a couple of weeks and I’ll design some better icons and add them to the design”, they say. After a couple of weeks, the software development team return with their technology, full of newly designed icons. User A is still not sure about it. They say, “Do you know what you need? You should add a widget for Y, then I can do Z.” The software development team agree, that would help. “Okay, we’ll make that widget”. The software development team create the widget and User A is pretty happy. “But first, I should ask a few other users in to give their opinion”, says User A. Along comes User B, who says, “Actually, what I need is a function for W, plus widget X”. User C then arrives and says, “I need widget X too, plus widget U and a function for V”. User D comes along and says, “I really don’t need widget X, but a widget for T would be great!”. The software development team take notes and say, “Okay, let’s do those. It will take us a few months”. This goes on and on… Developing Rapid Prototypes to Test New SoftwareWithout prototyping, your project is much more susceptible to failing as you cannot test your idea early on. The purpose of prototyping, plus processes such as Design Thinking, is to allow the software development team to make mistakes early and cheaply. Everyone wants to get their new product to market quickly and in an inexpensive way. Rapid prototyping is a method which take just days, or weeks, rather than months. It is a way of see the technology at an early stage of the process, rather than months into the development. Plus, this process has become easier. Over the last few years, a number of great digital prototyping tools have been created to help with this. Tools such as Axure, InVision, Proto.io and Pop are just a few that come to mind. In fact, in my research for this article I came across a great post by the design agency Cooper, where you can filter prototyping tools based on your needs. So, if you don’t already – definitely prototype. It’s fun too!
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