Wireframes, Mockups, Prototypes: How they orchestrate the design process together?
It’s a multilayer process of designing any product, especially for a website or an app. It’s highly desirable to follow all the stages to make sure you have a professional product
By now, I’m sure you know that we are going to talk about design processes, particularly web and app designs. I will briefly tell you about all the stages of the mobile app/web design process.
- Wireframing
- Creating Mockups
- Prototyping
What is Wireframe?
Wireframes are low-fidelity blueprints of a mobile application or a website. They depict what goes where in the product design, but only as a basic draft, without focusing on details, color, shape, or size.
Simply put, a wireframe is a sketch by the designer. Its purpose is to show the structure of the app or a website with basic elements and content placement. Designers can bring order to scattered ideas and present them schematically in a wireframe.
What does a wireframe consist of?
Wireframes present the products at its inception stage. It shows the logic of the website or mobile app and consists of:
:: Boxes or circles
:: Lines
:: Text
Though there are no set solutions that are universally applicable, there are still a few things that should be considered. A good wireframe is the one that is created with reference to the specific features of the product, be it a mobile app or web.
Why is it needed?
Wireframes visually help to create the website or an app essentially easier by pairing the entire product and focus on the functionalities.
We as an experienced software house, believe that the client needs to be educated about how the proposed app or the website will function. A written or a verbal explanation of the product, the major functionalities stay down to their imaginations, which will lead to more error. It’s here where the wireframes can help in squaring these circles.
Recommended Wireframe tool: AdobeXd, InVision Studio, Sketch.
Okay, but what is a Mockup?
We just saw how a wireframe is a simple draft or a sketch. Well, then comes the next part, lending colors to the sketch. A mockup is a transformation of the schematic layout into a more colorful and static representation of the future product.
A mockup is not just the blueprint, it’s the end look of the app or the website. Mockups are often confused as Wireframes. The main difference between the both is that mockups don’t skip details: on the contrary, they are all about details, showing the feel of an actual app or website and showing how all the elements function together.
When to use a Mockup?
The mockups can be viewed of the highest value during certain stages of the app or web design. Anyone can use a mockup when you want to:
- experiment with the look of the product.
- decide the product’s color, font, visual styles.
- present the design interface to potential users or stakeholders.
- decide your brand identity.
Why is it important?
Mockups fill the visual details of a wireframe, like colors, font, graphics, and layout. The best part about mockup is that it gives you quite a good idea of how the app or website will finally look upon its completion. Comparing to wireframes, which is just a visual draft, a mockup is much closer to the final version.
Also on the development side, a mockup provides a detailed specification of the product. It also creates an understanding of the product because you see how the user is going to see it.
Recommended Mockup Tools: Balsamiq, Mockplus, Adobe Xd
And then comes Prototyping
A prototype is a highly-detailed functional version of your application or the website. It may or may not coincide 100% with the final product, but the similarity must be really high.
Even though prototypes are not put into code yet, they look like actual applications. Users can interact with the app and can easily test the user flow.
What advantages do you get with prototyping?
There are tons of benefits of working with an interactive model before building an MVP. You get more one more chance to check the product inside out and finally confirm or reject the variants of the product.
Exploring new ideas and identifying product Improvements
The process of prototyping provides opportunities for new idea explorations early on in the development process. A prototype is the product foundation that is continually improved until the app meets the business goal.
Cost Saving
Starting the app-building phase with prototyping can save a lot of money in the long run. Solving the problems, in the beginning, is always less expensive than towards the end.
Recommended Prototyping Tools: Figma, Balsamiq, InVision.
A quick example of creating a prototype using Adobe Xd
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How do Wireframes, Mockups, and Prototypes stage the design process
A good design will always find all three stages in the design process — creating a wireframe, mockup, and prototype. Though all three of these stages look similar, they hold an important role in the development of a well-designed user-centric product.
Wireframes provide a structure of the product to the developers and let them understand the product architecture and best coding solution. The product design should be well structured and should gradually translate to a mockup.
The stage when you get to finalize your design and see how structural elements turn into colors, buttons, content layout. Ultimately leading to prototyping. you get to feel what the user will experience on the app and interact with it. Such an approach reduces misunderstanding and unbudgeted expenses.
Why does flutterDevs recommend a prototype before development?
At FlutterDevs, We put attention to details in designing Mock-up, Wireframes, and prototypes. All the revisions and changes are done in mockup and prototype. Once the prototype is ready, the client has an exact idea of the application and he can see the animation and navigation of each and every screen to get the real feel of the app, only the data is a dummy. Once the prototype is approved, the process of development starts and it really goes smooth and saves a lot of time in development.
We recommend getting a working prototype before the application development starts. Also, we have a way to export all the graphics from adobe xd for different resolutions of mobile phones and tablets and it saves a lot of time for developers in the development.
If you are planning to have your own mobile application, website, custom web app designed by a professional design team, or have any type of query or concern regarding its concept, technical know-how, the best way to get it done then don’t hesitate.
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