Prototyping is a journey in which an idea transforms into a proof of concept. Creating functional and interactive wireframes, get the clarity on what is your ultimate purpose for building a website or Web Application. Because without a destination, the journey will end up nowhere. Experienced and well-trained engineers of Credencys provide end-to-end website development services to help you in achieving the intended target. In Ultimate Guide to Prototyping: Wireframing and UI/UX Design Is The Cornerstone of Successful Web Application (Part 1), you have learned about the importance of prototyping in website development process and benefits you can avail by using it. In this blog, explore prototyping activities and deliverables of Credencys.

Web Application Development Life Cycle at Credencys

Prototype Activities

Wireframe works as a master plan for developing a website. Through a clickable Prototype, stakeholders can experience the would-be interface of the website. Functional prototypes enable users to test the structure from more than one dimension.

Understand Product and Vision

Usually, businesses misunderstand prototyping as web application design. Wireframe represents a logical flow of the website. Create a structure of your website in a functional or static wireframe by considering the ultimate business vision. Depict the entire flow, essential features, important functions, design patterns, and other essential elements into it.

Transparent and consistent interaction with the client helps a Web Application Development company in understanding the project requirements. Gather and analyze the detail provided by stakeholders and check out the possibilities of practical implementation.

Research and Ideate

Rather than directly jump into the prototype designing, it is better to carry out detailed research in order to understand the expectations properly. When you have a brief of requirements, pick them one by one and start researching about them. List out the features, functions, 3rd party tools, design elements, etc. that you need to develop and integrate into the website.

The web application development company has to perform in-depth research to identify how these aspects help in achieving the ultimate business goals and what benefits they drive to the website. Create a functional prototype and share it with the stakeholders. Inform them about the technical feasibility and collect their feedback. Make the necessary changes in wireframe and start ideation of the website development.

Determine the User Journey

Define a smooth route for your web application so that users can easily move from one page to another. Set up the navigation accurately and establish logical interlinking amongst the site pages. Focus on creating a structure rather than wasting the time in improving its look and feel.

Draw out the user’s journey for each page. Prototypes help in identifying how many assumptions you have made and which details you have not considered. It is suggested to identify and work out on such issues at the initial phase rather than creating disputes during coding.

Define Features and Functionalities

Have you decided user’s journey? Great. Now, it’s time to decide features and functions of the website. Every organization has different objectives to build a web application. To achieve these goals, they have to identify, develop, integrate, and deploy the features and functions that work seamlessly with each other.

Usually, the first version of prototype contains lots of features as clients want to explore the idea. Later on, stakeholders realize that there are several unnecessary elements in the wireframe. They identify the important features and functions and remove extra integrations from the web application. Keep the website neat and clean by developing and deploying only required aspects.

Create Intuitive Designs

Start creating a basic and intuitive prototype design for your web application. Make it clickable so that stakeholders and users can have a high-level overview of navigation. Also, determine the places for content, images, call to action, etc. When you receive the approval from the client, you just need to convert the dummy structure into a beautiful website with all the required features and functions that run in real-time.

Prototype Development

Design a prototype that contains user journey, advanced features and functionalities, intuitive design format, and more. It should offer an exclusive overview of the would-be web application. It provides the basic format of the website’s look and feel, placement of text, images, call-to-action, as well as features and functions along with their would-be operations.

Proof of Concepts (POC)

Create a proof of concept of your idea. It is a kind of demonstration which verifies certain concepts and theories as well as check out their potential for real-world application. POC is a prototype that is designed to decide feasibility but it doesn’t represent deliverables.

Planning and Budgeting

It’s quite easy to plan out the development phase as you have everything in-line. You can provide the estimation of efforts, hours, and money. All you need is to move ahead for real-time implementation of the project. At Credencys, project planning and budgeting involve prototyping, preparations, development & integration, UAT, Pilot, and support.

Prototyping Process at Credencys

Journey to Create a High Fidelity UI

Prototype Deliverables

Prioritize feature set for agile development

Every feature carries a different level of importance. Prioritize them as per your preferences. Follow the Agile methodology to boost up your prototyping process. Define a set of functions under each feature and also introduce them in the wireframe. Determine all the essential features and develop them one by one in descending order from high to low priority. It helps in releasing the web application within a short time span.

User Persona and Use Cases

User persona is all about understanding the target audience. Knowing your customer helps in making your product more successful. Choose influential features and design elements to create the wireframe based on well – defined user persona. It enables clients to efficiently recognize and communicate the user’s’ needs.

Also, integrate use cases in prototypes that aid stakeholders in understanding the user’s journey and the different touchpoints. It works as a framework and guideline principles to deliver interactive user experience design. In the user experience brief, it is important to perform end-user research, competitor analysis, business objectives, key performance metrics, and more.

Designs and Style Guide

Create a style guide for your brand using intuitive website design. Add both of these factors in the prototype in order to make your would-be website eye-catchy with bright colors and professional look and feel. Use attractive images and dashing infographics to represent the information in a more engaging way. Set a simple navigation so users can easily switch from one page to another. Execution of decent style guide impresses the customers and inspires them to explore more about your offerings by visiting the website.

Click-through High-fidelity Prototype

The prototype should be clickable. It helps users in understanding when they click on A, they will land on a page B that unveils the relevant information related to A. Rather than using a diagram, wireframe offers a more appealing presentation format of website page navigation. Moreover, in a functional prototype, you can add a few pieces of content too.

Project Plan, Timeline, and Cost

Wireframe allows businesses and website development companies to decide the project plan at the initial phase. So, it becomes easy for them to step into development part and release the product on time. Brainstorming is over with the finalization of prototype. Based on the approved prototype, a web application development company can effectively plan out the project progress path and provide approx. estimation of time and cost.

Team

To create an accurate and perfect prototype, you need a team of business analysts who gather and understand the requirements, analyze them, prepare a wireframe and share it with the stakeholders. Analysts make required changes in the prototype as per the changing needs of clients. Once project scopes are determined, they share the wireframe with technical architects and designers to get the approx. estimation of time, efforts, and cost.

Final Words

Website prototyping is the best practice to accomplish the business objectives successfully and swiftly. Credencys works closely with the client to bring ideas to life. After the successful completion of prototype design, Credencys team steps into the development phase. Now, it’s time to develop and deploy the features and functions to shape out a website. Explore the website and web application development process of the company by reading the upcoming blog.

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