A great app idea and entrepreneurial spirit make for a good start, but it’s the app prototype that separates the wannabes from the committed. It’s an essential step you don’t want to skip. A set of mock-ups builds credibility. It communicates your vision. Prototypes save development time, decrease app development cost, help you more effectively build business relationships and can even secure funding for your startup from an investor early in the process.
1. Validate The Opportunity
The goal is to get as much feedback as possible to begin to gauge what the demand for your app might be. A proof-of-concept. Are you successfully solving the problem that you originally set out to address? How have you researched and improved upon any competition?
Early in the process is the right time to spitball user experience/journeys/stories before moving onto mock-up wireframes, design and architecture. And then it’ll be time to gain valuable feedback from friends, advisors, potential investors and maybe even focus groups.
All the above should take place before kickstarting app development. That’s the expensive part.
“Entrepreneurs are builders, and sometimes you get carried away with the process of building things because its enjoyable,” cautions Djordje Dikic, co-founder of Palette — a hardware gadget dubbed the ‘Shazam for colour’ that went through the University of Melbourne’s Accelerator Program.
“App prototypes force you to be honest about the core value of what you’re building. Don’t waste cycles on unproven hypotheses, get out there and test the market and your assumptions.”
2. Fail Fast
Don’t be afraid to change directions if needed, just ensure there is data behind the decision. Customer behaviour moves fast and technology moves faster. Sometimes you need to adapt and move on with speed.
Group messaging software, Slack, now valued at $2.8 billion — wouldn’t exist if it hadn’t originally failed at making a game then tried to do something else. Photo sharing service Flickr also pivoted from a failed game.
Still on games, Patrick Cook is the game designer at Soap Mobile Games (SMG) in Sydney (the team behind the internationally successful Thumb Drift). “In games app development you want to find promising ideas as early as possible, and also discard bad ideas as early as possible. The faster you can create mock-ups to prove/disprove what you’re imagining, the more time you can spend working on good things.”
“The important thing a prototype needs to do is to prove the viability of an idea, fundamental mechanic, or system. If you can accomplish that without a huge amount of development, then you’re in a good place.”
3. Uncover Problems Sooner, Improve Development Time
Prototypes help focus your vision and demonstrate that your concept can actually be implemented. That’s particularly useful to get everyone on the same page if you’re working in a team.
You’ll be able to refine the experience and spot what some of the eventual dev hurdles might be — planning your approach and milestones accordingly. Perhaps even switch some of the tech you’re planning to work with if needed.
“A lot of time can be saved for figuring out how screens are linked to one another with the help of prototypes, hence it speeds up coding time,” explains Ting Tze Chuen, a full-stack app developer (and former lead iOS dev at BlueChilli, where he helped dozens of startups develop their app ideas there).
“Prototypes help developers bring ideas to life and make them as closely matched to the designs as possible.”
4. You Don’t Need To Code
For many app developer entrepreneurs, lightweight scripting/programming tools are ideal to quickly (and interactively) demonstrate an app’s user experience and design — without the investment of full-blown code.
iOS specialist, Ting Tze Chuen, says this approach is “usually the way to go unless a full code prototyping only takes a few days, which could be possible for an app of a small scale. Otherwise, it is really expensive to dive into app development head on as there are usually tendencies to pivot and iterate often especially for startup apps.”
5. Be Taken Seriously And Find Investors
Investors and prospective customers will always seek to reduce their risk. They’ll ask how you’ve validated your idea. They’ll inquire about testing. These days, they’ll generally also want to see and touch a prototype. Something tangible. And you, as an entrepreneur, only have one shot at making a first impression.
Jason Gitmans is the CEO of ASX-listed Wangle Technologies, which is developing a patent-pending app that provides data acceleration for smartphone users. In his experience, “showing a prototype and/or putting it into the hands of investors so they can see and visualise the benefit greatly enhances the probability they will invest. Don’t show any investors unless it’s finished and that you have thoroughly tested it and that it works.”
Bosco Tan, co-founder of popular budgeting app, Pocketbook, explains further: “partners are definitely better able to evaluate your proposition with prototypes. There’s much made about the fact that ideas are worth little and execution is everything. In this vein, prototypes provide the entree to what execution can look like. Responses to these help refine execution and sharpen the original idea.”
A prototype will help you start those conversations earlier. With greater credibility. This might allow you to also start conversations with other partners/distributors/vendors sooner also. Even marketing, like leveraging email databases, and other growth hacking efforts.
