Creating UI/UX prototypes: where your team can go wrong

Why your startup team needs interactive prototypes 

As a founder, you understand the critical importance of getting your product to market quickly while ensuring it meets the highest functionality and user experience standards. Interactive prototypes are a robust bridge between your vision and the final product, allowing you to visualize, test, and perfect your ideas before committing to full-scale development.

Prototypes help reduce risks, improve the quality of the end product, and efficiently utilize resources. This part of the initial development lets you build better communication and make discussions of ideas more productive. Also, it boosts your team’s ability to rapidly adapt to new requirements or changes. Definitely something one should bother with.

How to design interactive prototypes for the initial development stage

The process of creating interactive prototypes includes several key stages.

Requirement gathering

Before starting the design process, conduct a thorough competitor analysis and analyze the client's and target audience's needs. Make sure you build what your client wants, not what you want. 

Creating wireframes

These are low-detailed drafts that give an idea of the basic structure of the interface. Depending on the information you gathered during the research and the functionality, you can opt for really simplified wireframes or add a certain number of details. Low-detailed wireframes are optimal for validating ideas quickly. For instance, your team is choosing between two different shapes or sizes of a button and needs to pick one that will be the most convenient for users.

Developing mockups

Mockups include more detailed visual layouts showcasing the interface as users will see in the final product. For instance, if a wireframe of an investment solution UI has just a placeholder of the projected portfolio performance visualization, a mockup shows an example of how this visualization will look.

Creating an interactive prototype

Basically, it’s a mockup with interactive elements that simulate every step of the end product's usage. It is dynamic, so the person with access to a clickable prototype can navigate the interface in a simulation of the final product.

Prototype testing

Prototypes are made for testing, not just by your client’s team. Usability testing and collecting user feedback are crucial to proving the point of the prototype—creating a product users will love.

What can (will) go wrong during prototyping

It’s not necessarily bad to face problems during the prototyping stage. Actually, prototyping is meant to comb out any mistakes, wrong assumptions, and bad ideas so that they don’t pop up in your end product and frustrate its users.

Here are several issues you may bump into during the creation of prototypes:

Misunderstanding requirements. Even the most professional communication can leave the sides with certain discrepancies in expectations. Inadequate or incorrect understanding of the requirements can happen, but it costs less in design than in code. A good team will gather requirements attentively and double-check anything with even a pinch of ambiguity. 

When your team or tech partner discovers that your vision goes slightly (or very much) against the target audience's expectations, it’s wise to make the required changes, however significant they should be. By the way, it’s a great test of your team’s expertise and ability to prioritize client and end user needs.

Technical constraints. Prototyping is where you bring design to the dev team. This is also where the dev team can break your idea against the harsh reality, saying that certain features can’t be implemented due to technical limitations. So be ready for compromises or adding extra to the budget.

Insufficient testing. More than eight tests might be too much, but less than six may lead to identifying issues at later stages, which will take more time and money to fix. Make sure you make the most of this stage.

The duration of creating an interactive prototype depends on the project's complexity. Starting from scratch, your team will probably spend weeks. If you already have detailed wireframes, completing prototypes can be a matter of hours with an experienced tech partner.

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Summing up on interactive prototype creation

To develop a leading Fintech product, it takes not only innovative thinking but also a solid approach to iterative design and testing. Interactive prototypes are indispensable in this journey, offering clarity, flexibility, and early validation of your concepts. 

At INSART, we understand the nuanced demands of fintech startups and the pivotal role that effective prototyping plays in your success. You can leverage our extensive expertise in Fintech to transform your ideas into impactful, user-centric solutions, setting the stage for a successful launch and sustained growth. Let's grab a virtual coffee, you'll tell me about your business, and we'll see how INSART can help it grow.