Given that this article is primarily concerned with how real users interact with digital prototypes and their impact on the design process, we’ll also quickly consider the latest updates in AI and their effects on digital and interactive prototypes.
UX design is dependent on users and user testing. Before starting any design process, we focus on the people most likely to benefit from our potential products and the problems we need to solve for them. Those people, however, aren’t just our end-users; the list includes all internal and external stakeholders: the executives and business operators who need to see a profit or enhanced operation or the customers, clients, and end-users who want an intuitive, easy-to-use product that solves real problems.
That said, a product’s success boils down to what we can learn from the end-user. And that’s where prototyping comes into its own. Interactive prototypes help us monitor our users’ joys, issues, and frustrations, helping us design and build the best product we can deliver.
People and Prototyping
People are at the heart of everything we do in UX research, so it goes without saying that any product built without their input is based on guesswork and assumption and can never match the success of data-driven decision-making.
As far as prototyping tools go, there have traditionally been three model types:
- Low-fidelity prototypes: Made of paper—typically cards, sketches, and post-it notes—created for sorting systems, architectures, complex navigation, and developing user interfaces.
- Wireframe prototypes: An interim option with minimum detail but some level of interactivity, exploring faster flow and developing more detailed iterations.
- High-fidelity prototypes: A digital prototype that resembles what a finished product may include and how it might look.
Choosing between low, wireframe, and high-fidelity prototypes was generally defined around resources: how much time and money did an organisation have to spare, and could they explore possible options and solutions faster and more efficiently with something simpler?
There will likely always be a place for paper prototypes with immediate input systems such as card sorting. They’re so simple and quick to iterate that a digital version can’t match its fast, on-the-fly changes and versatility (yet!).
However, since AI was introduced to our industry, the lines between wireframe mid-level digital prototypes and the polished look of high-fidelity prototypes have become a little more blurred.
AI and Digital Prototypes
At the heart of this technological environment, as UX researchers, we’ve been fortunate to see waves of improvement in both the tech available to build our products and that to aid our design and research practices.
And more recently, AI has given our industry (and everyone else’s) one of the biggest shake-ups to date.
It has sped up many UI, UX, design, and illustration processes, and prototyping is no exception. Using AI, designers and prototypers can create high-quality visual design options that are perfectly suitable as a kick-off point. In fact, using many of the many packages designed for digital prototyping, they can provide a template close to a final product in minutes rather than hours.
With automated image imagination, layout suggestions, colour schemes, and copy creation, the latest AI packages create a high-fidelity prototype far quicker than you could build a wireframe option. By providing well-written and accurate suggestions for copy and with style and layout options that could easily end up in your final versions—why not? The key consideration when delivering prototypes—and it’s not a new one—is whether or not all that detail is distracting from what you’re testing for or adding to it.
The Benefits of Involving Users in the Prototyping Process
Let’s get back to why our end users are essential to delivering better digital products.
It Puts Collaboration at its User-centric Heart
- Collaboration means everyone gets the final product they want: users, designers, managers, business owners, and stakeholders of every type.
Involving users in prototyping is a collaborative process and, quite honestly, is the link between almost all of our most essential UX processes.
The best design process involves all parties collaborating to devise a universal solution—one where everyone wins. This is one of the true keys to design thinking, where our most creative and innovative solutions regularly come from. Without everyone’s ideas, issues, thoughts, and needs on the table, it’s unlikely to happen.
The other part of prototyping—which is more aligned with problem-solving a product—is usability testing. Usability testing amongst real users delivers the pain points, problems, and interaction issues that creating prototypes was designed to uncover.
User testing is the only real way to determine how users interact with your products. High-fidelity prototypes are designed to represent how a final product may operate. They’re an ideal method for identifying where users struggle, discovering the things they love, and uncovering what they think could be better, what might be missing, and the improvements they’d like to see to make it the best version possible.
To Gain Insights at Every Step
- Regular feedback throughout the UX prototyping process
You’ve got your initial idea and a vision of the product you’d like to build, but to determine if it’s something users really want and what they’d expect from it, you need to ask your target audience. Initial rounds of questions during the early stages will help you make a plan built on their expectations.
However, prototyping will be key to your testing once your project is underway. Initially, simple paper prototypes can carve out the basics of the product architecture, navigation, and UI; wireframes will aid basic interactivity and user flow; and finally, your high-fidelity prototypes will focus on the finer details of the user interface and visual representation as you approach a final product.
It Lends Itself Beautifully to Iteration
- Refining the product with every new discovery
The UX design process is built on testing, observation, refining, and retesting. Iteration allows UX designers to create prototypes to test each element and feature. Rather than being overly time-consuming, rapid prototyping allows us to create prototypes quickly and simply to test our findings and make quick decisions about how possible solutions should work.
What Would Usability Testing Be Without Users?
- Real data delivers superior results and ROI
- Informed decision-making on global, national, local, and community-based projects
An app, website, or even a single feature can make or break a great business idea. If a final product isn’t fit for purpose or is so riddled with design flaws, its users will likely reject it, bringing a wave of terrible reviews, bad publicity, and brand ridicule. This is why UX is essential in today’s market. To understand what your target audience wants and needs, usability testing through low to high-fidelity prototypes allows designers to gather user feedback that creates the fine-tuned final product your users will delight in.
From your earliest ideas to your final design, user testing is generative and evaluative. From user flows and interactive elements to colour schemes and hero images, there’s a range of prototyping options to hand. Whether through paper prototyping or the latest prototyping software, these product models uncover the true performance of our designs, helping us create a smooth user experience that delivers better, more intuitive, enjoyable, and profitable products.
Understanding Our Users is How We Develop Empathy
- Understanding needs and defining goals
- Making heuristic and ethical choices
The goals of our products are often based on profit, ROI, and financial success of a product. However, the best-performing products give their users more than they expect, which could be in operation, delivery, the problems they solve, or something entirely different. To understand what those things might be, we have to understand our audiences on a personal level. Empathy comes from putting ourselves in our users’ shoes. UX research plays a huge part in making the ethical and heuristic choices that align with our users’.
Empathy with users shouldn’t be underestimated. User experience explores how people think, feel, and behave, making it an essential consideration when building their perfect product.
A Quick Recap – What is Prototyping?
Prototyping is a UX methodology in which users undertake tests on models based on the product design—from simple paper prototypes to stripped-out wireframe versions and high-fidelity digital prototypes. Their main purpose is usability testing, ensuring products operate seamlessly, and uncovering issues and pain points.
Importance of Prototyping
Testing Ideas
Prototypes are also used to experiment with, refine, and validate different design concepts. Prototyping plays an essential part in the design thinking process, where UX designers are encouraged to think ‘outside the box’ to deliver truly innovative solutions.
Understanding User Needs
Prototyping helps us gather user feedback and understand how users feel about using our products. Something as simple as card sorting—a form of paper prototype—is a great tool for designing the user interface and architecture, whereas a high-fidelity prototype can help in A-B testing of design elements as we near a complete final product.
Conclusion
Prototyping tools help us explore how a product may perform without the expense of building a complete, final version. They also allow us to gather feedback from real users in our target audience.
Design ideas can be easily tested at every stage using initial sketches or a paper prototype to high-fidelity prototypes that look and feel like the real thing. Thanks to constantly evolving technology, these tests can be quick and effective, uncovering valuable information and delivering essential feedback on user flow and interaction.
Without real users and effective prototypes, UX design becomes guesswork. Their part in the design process is essential to the success of an organisation and its products.
Our user research experts are available to help you get closer to your customers. If you would like to arrange a no obligation call, get in touch by emailing us at hello@ux247.com or share your requirement using the form below.
