Elevate Your UX Design: The Journey to Prototype Mastery

Prototype design is a powerful process where designers create and refine prototypes. It starts with planning user flows and ends with developing functional wireframes. This process involves testing and making improvements to ensure the design works well.

The process of prototyping

Creating simple wireframes and testing fully functional mockups are some of the most powerful skills a designer can master. However, in many workplaces, this crucial process is often skipped, with the focus shifted to quickly delivering a prototype to the next department. This shortcut can significantly impact the final product's success.

Many designers are unsure about the proper steps to build a prototype. When asked, they might respond with a confused look, saying, “You just do it.” While we all have a basic understanding of creating a prototype, we often can't articulate the process clearly.

Prototypes are among the most valuable deliverables, showcasing what the designer has created—whether it’s a website or a physical product. Clients and managers want to see and interact with these prototypes to understand their functionality and workflow.

Building a prototype involves more than just creating a draft. It's essential to understand the detailed process behind constructing these initial versions. This article will explore everything a designer needs to know and do to master prototype design.

Prototype Design: The Purpose of Prototypes

Human beings are highly visual. In fact, 30 percent of our cerebral cortex is devoted purely to vision . So when you see a prototype, the most important thing about it is that you see it! When the client can view it, and understand all of the processes involved with the product, especially areas of contention for future testing, that prototype comes to life.

So what is a prototype? A prototype is a tool for visualizing a smorgasbord of interactive design work; in effect, prototypes (at almost any stage) are an amalgamation of all the work that came before into a single, visible, functional piece. This visual representation demonstrates what the product is doing at any given point, what the interactive elements are, and how the product would function in the real world.

While there are plenty of mechanisms for the various aspects of prototype design (like?creating sketches), it’s easy to miss things and make mistakes.

This makes the work for how a prototype is built tremendously valuable, since in many ways it describes how the purpose of the product is actualized. Not perfectly, and definitely not accurately most of the time, but as the?name implies, prototypes aren’t final.

This clear explanation of how something works provides several valuable benefits, including:

Making it real – Before any prototypes are built, the product exists only as a concept. While this is fine initially, it must eventually become something that stakeholders and users can understand and appreciate. A prototype is the first step in transforming an idea from conceptual to tangible.

Work a problem – Design challenges often arise without immediate solutions. UX prototyping is an excellent skill for visualizing these problems and rapidly testing potential solutions. If a prototype doesn't work, it can be discarded, and a new approach can be tried, making it an effective way to iterate towards the best solution.

Iterate – Prototyping is a multi-stage process aimed at evolving your ideas. From initial sketches to high-fidelity models, each iteration introduces new behaviors and functions to test. With more data, we can refine our designs more quickly and intelligently.

Detect unintended scenarios – When a prototype becomes visible, it reveals the product's limitations and provides a clearer context for what elements should be included or excluded. This helps identify and address unintended scenarios.

Detect usability problems – This is a critical phase for many designers: once a product has any type of prototype, usability issues become much easier to identify and resolve.

Presentation – Prototypes at any stage are essential for presentations. Whether you're testing a webpage version or showcasing a product to a client, having a prototype in some form is expected. If one isn't provided, someone is likely to inquire about its absence and reasons for its omission.

How to Start the Prototype UX Process

Receiving a requirements document from a client and starting with a blank canvas can be daunting. Sorting through disorganized notes from meetings, napkin sketches, and blurry whiteboard photos often offers little clarity.

Since prototypes rely heavily on underlying information, it's crucial to gather all necessary details before beginning. Take into account the following checklist and thoroughly review the information provided by your client or manager:

1. What is the project aiming to achieve?

Begin by understanding the broader context: Does the product address a genuine need? How does it fulfill that need? Clarity on the product's utility is essential for delivering a viable solution.

2. Which products are currently competing in the market?

A Thorough competitive analysis offers a clear view of the current marketplace dynamics for the product category, including insights into user expectations.

3. Who is the target audience, and what objectives do they aim to achieve?

Understanding the demographics and user needs provides the essential context for designing products that cater to those specific user types and meet their requirements.

4. What type of product is it, and what (device) is it for?

With so many different technologies and solutions, UX designers need to know how the product will be used (web app, responsive website, mobile app, etc.), on what device(s), and how different versions will coexist (if at all).

5. Are there any visual precedents to follow?

If the product already exists and the project is for improvements or a redesign, it’s possible that some requirements exist in consideration of current user behavior with the product.

6. What are the deliverables?

Setting expectations about deliverables and the process is critical for your planning and workflow. Every project is different, but if the deliverables are well defined, the rest of the?UX design process?has a higher chance of going smoothly.

Draw Your Prototypes

Now that our data is organized, the next step is to begin sketching. Many designers may already have ideas about layout, structure, or where specific visual elements should go before putting pen to paper. While this is beneficial, the initial sketches aim to explore the available space, highlighting what's feasible—and more importantly, what isn't.

Gather your preferred writing tools, whether it's pencil and paper or marker and whiteboard. The sketching process is akin to a writer's freewriting or a musician's improvisation; draw based on the groundwork laid out earlier and keep in mind the elements below:

01 | User Flows –?Identify user flows to understand how users achieve their goals and interact with the system.        

02 | Information entities –?Each user flow will show some user inputs and outputs. Identify what they are, how they relate to the user behavior and expectations, what interactions they are involved with, and how they work.        

03 | First sketches –?After getting an idea of who will use the system, what they are going to do, and with what, it’s time to see how. Sketch your user flows no need to create the layout yet, just get the functionality resolved.        

04 | Sketch a rudimentary structure –?Once your user flows are outlined, you'll gain insights into the optimal layout for the product. Begin by sketching a basic framework, which includes placeholders for content such as text, photos, and videos, represented by simple boxes or scribbles. These hand-drawn elements are purely for visualization, helping to conceptualize the structure without worrying about precise sizing or final content.        

Consider using sketch pads, specially formulated paper, or specific tools designed to create clearer wireframes. These options provide basic layouts for various viewports, are cost-effective, and with the right stencils, make sketches much cleaner. They are especially useful if you tend to draw messily, as they offer correct aspect ratios and gridlines for smartphones and web browsers.

This process can be extended as needed, but it's important to advance to the next step once a user flow is fully defined and the completion process is clear. It's beneficial to alternate between sketching and creating digital wireframes to maintain creativity. As you work through additional flows, the product will gain solidity, naturally transitioning away from initial sketches.

Transforming to Digital (Low-to High-Fidelity Prototypes)

Once sufficient sketches are completed, the next step is to transition them into digital formats. Whether using Adobe XD , Sketch , Framer , Flinto , Figma , or another tool, digitizing sketches marks the initial stage of formalizing designs. This shift involves not only creatively adding necessary elements but also organizing assets and structure within the designs.

As prototypes evolve into practical forms with structured elements, the product begins to take form. Moving into digital prototypes, fidelity is determined by the level of interactivity, visual design, and content integration. Prototypes can vary in fidelity, ranging from low to high, with high-fidelity versions incorporating all three aspects at their most refined

With each new wire and iteration, ask two major questions: Does this page account for its purpose in the larger user flow? And does the interaction make sense (meaning did the user understand how to complete the action)? We ask these questions a lot. The more we do, the more likely each new iteration is to bring the prototypes closer to a final draft.

Digital prototypes offer enhanced testability due to their clarity and ease of reproduction, making them ideal for rapid iteration. Tools such as Figma and Proto.io are invaluable for creating interactive prototypes. Clickable prototypes facilitate comprehensive usability testing, assessing everything from single buttons to entire user flows with ease..

Clickable prototyping has become especially popular over the past few years thanks to the ease of use of programs like Figma. It is even more valuable for mobile devices, where now every major prototyping tool provides some avenue to see or test mobile wires directly on a test device.

With some engineering knowhow or more powerful tools like Justinmind or Axure , it’s also possible to build functional prototypes, which are interactive beyond simply clicking. Users can test things like filling out forms, accomplishing simple or complex tasks, and actually using the application as it’s meant to be used, all without actually building it. Designers with training in human computer interaction (HCI) design, including many?Toptal designers, regularly build and test with functional prototypes.

Interactive prototypes are great for testing animations, user operations inside the app, and higher-level functions that sometimes can’t be tested without a functional action.

Prototype with Purpose

Prototyping embodies both its allure and complexity in its iterative process. While this sentiment applies broadly, prototypes are distinct in that they begin and end with clear intent. Understanding why a screen behaves a certain way, how features should function, and whether users benefit from a particular workflow is crucial; without this clarity, a prototype is not developed—it's merely drawn up and then constructed on the fly.

Information entities within each user flow encompass user inputs and outputs, essential for understanding user behavior and expectations, their interactions, and operational mechanics.

Even with meticulously crafted wireframes, thorough consideration of user stories, and a structured information architecture as a guide, overlooking crucial elements remains a challenge in prototype UX design. It's imperative for clients, managers, and designers to remember that prototypes are not final—they are iterative drafts in the UX design journey.

When developing your next prototypes, always ask a critical question: Does this achieve the intended outcome? If not, it presents another chance to refine and iterate towards improvement.

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Coming up "Important role of Information Architecture in the design process?"