Market Research

Great products are always born with unique ideas. But just a unique idea is not enough to build a successful mobile application. Fundraising, creating the best app design, leveraging an advanced tech stack and making the app attractive to the target audience is important for the revolutionary development of mobile apps. All these things are not so rosy.

With multiple pitches hitting the inboxes of mobile app investors on a daily basis for fundraising, it becomes difficult to distinguish the idea from the start-up. Making sure that the promising features and intuitive app design solve the user problems and deliver the best experience before the app launches is a hard nut to crack. and so on.

What is the solution? Create an MVP version of the app with mobile app prototype development. The development of the prototype helps in testing the waters by making the beta version of the app available to the customers to know their feedback and impress potential investors.

What is a mobile app prototype?

The mobile app prototype is an interactive, high-fidelity blueprint of the product idea with screens, interfaces, design elements and functions without coding.

The prototype is a visual presentation of the app that evolves from paper sketches and wireframes to prototypes and further iterations. The prototype is not functional as the MVP version of the mobile application. They were only meant to get feedback on the interface, usability and features before the project went into the ground.

Wikipedia has fairly defined it in a single sentence, which is, “A prototype is an early example, model, or release of a product built to test a concept or process.”

Interested in making mobile prototypes? Before we move on to discussing how to prototype a mobile app, let’s go over the advantages of prototyping software for mobile apps.

Why have mobile app prototypes become important to businesses?

Test the waters

When companies start app development without building a prototype mobile app, there is a chance that the app will not be well received by the target audience. It can be prevented by making prototypes. The mobile app prototype helps to know the user feedback for the future app that makes the mobile app user-centric and fulfills the business goals.

Cost-efficient relocation

If you’ve launched a mobile app without a mobile app mockup or prototype, if the users find it full of bugs, missing important features, or encountering unexpected crashes, it becomes an expensive move to fix everything . On the other hand, the mobile app prototype allows companies to know user preferences and fix things right away. Early research and strategic decision bring ROI to scale.

Verify user experience

The high-fidelity prototype vividly showcases the look and feel of the app that appeals to the users. Testing UX prototypes is an effective process to validate the app’s usability and the experience it delivers to users. It ensures that the app is designed with the best UI and UX before launch.

Prepare the investors for financing

Adding stakeholders, investors, and customers to the discussion table makes app planning strategic. The prototyping process is a way to better communicate the app idea and visually convince them how it will appeal to the users and to solve real problems, which is difficult with a textual presentation.

How do you build a prototype for a mobile app?

Sketch the problem that the app idea will solve

Before you even go into prototype development, it is essential to identify the problem that the future app will solve. The problem ranges from meeting business digital requirements to making the apps intuitive. If the app idea doesn’t fill the void significantly, it will eventually show up in the app store graveyard. To avoid an embarrassing situation, the pain points are first outlined, which helps in determining the purpose of the app and how the features of the app provide solutions to the users.

Discover the important functionalities

The second step takes you to brainstorm about the most important app requirements in terms of functionality. The prototype contains important, relevant and innovative functions. So make a list of features first, then prioritize what’s essential to simulate in a prototype, because including dozens of features won’t provide accurate insights. The prioritization is based on must-have versus nice-to-have app features.

For example, when Tinder launched a dating app, it was launched with a basic dating concept that allows the users to get a perfect match based on a few criteria. Later on, it was expanded to include swiping left and right functions to improve the user experience.
Take 3-4 features in your prototype and then have them tested in the target market through surveys and interviews to gain rich insights.

Captured app idea on paper

Once you have completed the list of necessary features to include in the prototype, the next step is to create a rough draft of the prototype on paper. The sketch is a low-fidelity wireframe in which the primary screens of the mobile application are designed with UI elements. The arrows show the flow from one page to another.

For example, when you create a rough sketch for the checkout page, the placeholders are drawn for product images, buttons, and details, along with arrows showing what will happen when the user taps a button.

The advantage of this rough draft is that it can be revised quickly and is a great medium to communicate the app idea and collect feedback. The rough sketches (Paper prototype) are converted into a wireframe that displays a product overview consisting of boxes, words, lines and a small description. The framework gives a look and feel to the app. You can refer to these tips to build an efficient wireframe.

Turn it into a digital prototype

The low-fidelity wireframe consisting of boxes and lines is converted into a digital prototype with buttons and text fields. The prototyping tools have a library of Android and iOS UI elements that help create a refined user interface and allow testers to get a real feel for the app and test it better. The animations and programmed interactions turn the sketches into a pixel-perfect prototype, bringing the app to life.

Principle, Figma, Marvel, InVision and POP are popular prototyping tools that are used worldwide even by non-designers to create a good version of the prototype.

Test the prototype

The initial build of the prototype is not the final version presented directly to investors. Instead, it is tested by a wide range of audiences to get real feedback. The more input you get from the users, the better it will be for the prototype for improvements. The developers can also get real-time feedback through prototype tools that allow users to comment on the prototype.

The feedback makes it possible to repeat the prototype until it is perfect. The multiple iterations make it possible to create a prototype that addresses the problems faced by users.

Share it with stakeholders

It is important to have a prototype verified by the customers or investors as it helps them to know the final look and feel and the overall operation of the app. Sharing the prototype link with key stakeholders is not a good decision. Scheduling a meeting with stakeholders and representing the prototype is a good approach if they have any questions or concerns about app design.

Plus, you should be ready with a story around a mobile app prototype that highlights the problem, solution, business model and shows why it’s a great investment. To improve the quality of the prototype, you can enlist the help of professional UI/UX designers for the best results.

The mobile app’s prototyping tools make the prototype development process effortless and faster. The range of available prototype builders for mobile apps that allow designing from wireframes and mockups to prototypes. Sketching like tool speeds up mockup development with a set of features and plugins but cannot bring animation and interactivity to the app. Balsamiq and UXP in software support animation. Proto is one of the mobile app prototyping platforms that meet simulation and other prototyping requirements.

With tons of prototyping tools available, be sure to check the intuitiveness, interactive controls, cross-platform support, template support, and design tools so you can get the best tool on your side.

Conclusion

The step count might make you feel like the journey from app ideation to prototyping is quite a bit longer. The investment of time, resources and effort in prototype development pays off when the app becomes a huge success. The prototype design is no longer an optional part. It has become an important part of the app development process providing rich insights, eliminating the guessing game.

The low-cost prototype development shares the clear vision of the mobile application and enables companies to improve the product with UX validation and stakeholder involvement. The expert app developers always prefer to build the prototype to ensure the success of the app.