Prototyping Pays

We believe that prototyping always brings benefits to the design and development process, and in our recent work with Solicitors Strategic Solutions Ltd this has been proved yet again... they certainly agree.

Through a series of informal meetings and online prototype demos we worked with S3 to develop their business ideas and design the core architecture and functionality of a web application that will allow them to launch a brand new business tool later this year.

S3 are investing highly in this new business offering and were particularly appreciative of the approach we took; to fully examine and test their ideas with an interactive mock up of the application and, together, to hone these ideas into a simple and elegant web application which users will find intuitive and accessible.

Apart from the obvious benefits of 'getting it right' when it comes to the user experience, we've always found this approach to bring clarification and efficiency to the development process:

• The needs of users are explored right from the start and inform the information architecture, functionality and interactions of the system.
• Technical requirements are identified early on so that the right technologies can be applied.
• The client is able to visualise the web application more clearly and give detailed direction as to their requirements for the final build.

When a web application has been envisioned and well defined through prototyping, before a single line of code has been cut, the efficiency savings are significant.

As web application developers and user experience designers we select the tools that most suit the needs of the project. In the world of wireframing and prototyping there is an ever growing list of online tools available to create both low and high-fidelity prototypes. On this occasion we used Justinmind Prototyper. This is a relative new web and mobile app prototyping tool with great features and a very intuitive interface for building quite complex interaction simulations. It comes with the add-on Justinmind Usernote, a web service which allows online collaboration, reviewing and usability testing of your prototypes. Our choice worked well for us and our client.

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