The Importance of Prototyping & Testing in App Development

Picture this: You are about to release your completed mobile app to the market. You hired a few developers and designers in town and put countless hours making this app work. Once you release it to the market however, the feedback is not what you expected. The design was flawed and the user experience was not great. This happens to countless hopeful app developers and businesses releasing apps. Fortunately, this bad experience can be mitigated with the help of prototyping and testing. Utilizing a prototype and testing it with a team of developers can lead to powerful insights allowing you to develop the app you and your users want.

Prototyping Explained

A mobile app prototype is designed to indicate how the finished product will perform. However, the prototype is malleable and does not require nearly as much time and money as the completed mobile app. A prototype differs from an MVP in the sense an MVP is a fully functioning product that is ready to be tested in the market, while a prototype is created very early in the process, and testing is usually done internally. Sometimes prototypes do not require code. A prototype is the version one of your product. Prototypes are never flawless.

Benefits of Prototyping

The main idea of creating a prototype is to get your product off the bench and on deck. Since this is the first time your product has been tested, there is likely to be many errors. So, before releasing it directly to the market, a prototype allows you to work out the errors, making sure your app will exceed your customers expectations when released. Additionally, the prototype will allow you to see if the app expresses your vision the way you want, or if tweaks need to be made. Creating a prototype will let you figure out if it is working the way you imagined it would work. Furthermore, the prototype will allow you to test the product with your customers to see how they react to it. All these valuable insights would not be possible without creating a prototype first.

Benefits of Testing

Once you have a functional prototype, you are now able to test the mobile app and gather first hand user experience data from your team. With enough testing, you will be able to conclude what additions or manipulations will need to be made to your mobile app. After testing has been done, a team of good developers will then be able to enhance the apps performance and remove the first round of bugs. This process may need to be done a few times before it can be completely released to the market. Since the prototype was tested, you are able to change it easily to best fit you and your customers desires, without busting your budget.

Takeaway

To sum it up, prototyping and testing allow you to realize your areas of improvement and adjust your app without going over your budget. Developing a prototype will immediately allow you to witness the first of your errors, and allow you to correct them without releasing your product to the market. More so, since this is the first version of your vision, prototyping it is a cost effective way to make sure this is what you desired. Overall, prototyping will allow you to gain advantageous insights before fully committing your time and money on a fully developed mobile app.

How Waker Can Help

Prototype, test, iterate, build, and repeat is our motto. With a top team of designers, we can help you and your company achieve a new level of interactivity in customer discovery and fundraising with cost-efficient design prototyping, before we build. Once you are satisfied with the design and ready to build, our top-notch developers can help this product come to life. Check out our case study on how we helped TicketFire reignite the way people exchange tickets.