Ep 313 - Prototyping like a pro How exactly needed to be done ?

In next four minutes to five minutes, I'm going to be telling you what is mean by prototype and how as a designer you can able to learn and implement it in a very quick span of time. Step one is all about doing the proper definition and research for your product. You should know who's your user, what is his goal, what is the problem you're solving and what is the user Persona. Problems which you're taking. Based on that you try to create a feature user flow. Once you're creating a user flow which is completely featured in, you prioritize this. Then go and do a research complete user interviews to validate what you've taken assumptions completely do the competitor analysis and SWOT analysis. Go to the field and market and survey and find out the real pain points. And now reprioritize the assumptions what you created. This is the first step before doing any prototype because many designers they're creating prototypes which is completely meaningless for young designers as well as fresh designers, as well as mid level as well as senior experienced designers. Let me tell you, everybody has to go through this process. You cannot get to the shortcut. Once you're jotting down this core features and the desired interactions, then you get to the second phase called sketching and wireframes. This is where you will ideate a lot. This is where you will sketch lot of concepts. Why? Because this is where your iterations is more. Because sketching is a very, very quick process. You can scrap it and you can rename. You can re do the sketching activity again. There is a reason why people do sketching and wireframing in a low fidelity in the first place. Why? Because the iterations can be done more. Your team can ideate a lot of possibilities. Your team can find out which user flow works good. Your management can change the decision. Your customers and client can change your decision over time so that you keep on iterating until you hit the real clear solution what you wanted. Because this helps completely to quickly experiment with your layout flow without getting much bogged down with too much details in the visual. This is a paper prototyping is the most popular method in the design world. Why? Because it's just a quick. You can scrap it, you can rearrange, you can rename, you can combine, you can create a new combination. You can start creating more ideas around this as well. Okay. So this keeps you into a state of flow so that you are ideating more, that you are iterating fast, that you are thinking like building like a Lego blocks on your ideas. So that you keep innovating more. This is the most creative phase of the design process. But many designers don't do it. They always want high fidelity screens to be done faster. Right? Let me tell you, if you don't do this properly, you. You cannot go to the step three which is medium fidelity and high fidelity. This is where you talk to your management and say this is the reprioritized needs, this is the earlier needs, this is the business need, this is my user need. And this is what my ultimate human centric need also is. Aligning based on the interaction principles, what heuristic law and particularly Don Norman's interaction principles really align. You can take any good references from this kind of a study and start creating meaningful interactions. This is where you will go much detail into buttons, this is where you will go much detail into creating colors, gradients, borders, interaction depth, shadows, placements, grid reusable components and creating the holistic design systems which is aligned to the accessibility and the brand guidelines what your customer is using. Once you're creating that, then you go to the step four which is called testing and iterating. This is where your real time users are testing, they are using your. You have to be patiently observing what they're doing. Gather the feedback, observe the minor usability issues also major usability issues also and try to reiterate it and tweak it in your design. Try to refine your visuals again, try to report to your management and say this is just not working. Let me go and iterate it, let me create it this way, let me create it that way. How the competitor is doing. Then you do one more research. If it requires primary or secondary, you do it again. Unless until you do it, you are not going to go to the next phase. Once you are clear about this rapid way of quickly testing out with your market, then you go to the step by which is called develop and handoff. See guys, once the prototype is completely developed, polished and tested, it's time to definitely give it to the developers. Because developers provides you the specification developers who is having this information with specification assets, interaction guidelines and design system and annotations. He will be clear to work on its own Tools like Just in Mind offers great built in handoff features for the developer. Others like Figma and Adobe XT also supports developer modes and they can also asset all the export. They can also export all the assets what you've created with respect to the color code, with respect to the components, with respect to the sizing, with respect to the gradients, with respect to all the spacing and elements what they have so that a smooth handoff happens to the developer. So just in just few steps I'm summarizing this entire podcast. First step is define and research. Once you clear it, go to the sketch and wireframes. Once you're clear with this, go for the building and high fidelity mock ups and prototypes. Once you're clear, just go and test it out and it once it's clear, hand it off to the developer. Because prototyping is not about just visuals, it's about ideating and validating your assumptions and ideas with the user and creating the better user experience collaborating with the development team to make it into the market fast. See, in last five minutes I've given you a complete design thinking methodology with respect to prototyping in mind. If you want to listen more of in a short span of time, subscribe for my podcast and and give a five star rating in Apple and Spotify wherever you're listening. And keep typing your pain points also in the podcast below so that I can able to address you in the future as well. Take care. All the best. Bye bye.