How Interactive Prototyping Works to Make your E-Business Succeed

Whether you’re about to launch an outstanding online product, a careful, thought-out approach is what you should stand for. No matter what you’re about to create: a website, mobile app, or software solution, idea visualization instead of guessing is the key to the future success.

Interactive prototyping can be compared to the architectural simulation, which is performed long before the outset. The whole process of introducing a new e-business solution for the market (from idea creation to product development and promotion) is much the same house-building: as well as the architectural simulation is performed long before the outset, creating an interactive prototype should be completed long before the main part — product’s designing, programming, and testing.

Some of the online entrepreneurs may wonder why prototyping is so necessary for their business. The answer is simple: the main goal of this process is to minimize the product development risks.

The most common problems related to bringing a new web or mobile product to the market include:

Heavy time and money expenditures.
Communication failure between the developers and the client.
Blurred requirements causing reworks over and over again.
No customer’s opinion taken into account, so the product can’t find its market niche.
It’s hard to present your idea to investors without visualization.
Bugs, errors, and breakdowns found out on the development stage.

And prototyping is vital to minimize those risks on the early product development stage!

From idea to interactive prototype: key milestones

AMgrade is about to show you the whole “cuisine” of prototyping from within.

Stage 1: Idea and requirements briefing.

Formalize all the ideas and requirements. Define the “great mission” of your project, decide which customers’ problems it’s going to solve, which unique features it will offer.

Stage 2: Analysis.

The concept analysis includes not only evaluating the prospects of the market, but also the definition of its target audience, researching the best practices and methods used by competitors to win the market.

Stage 3: Goals & features definition.

The project’s future structure directly depends on the goals it’s about to achieve. For example, if you aim to increase your business visibility, your website or app should be integrated with social networks to increase viral sharing. Adding a blog linked to your main website or app will also work in this respect.

Stage 4: Creating the first mockup.

In paper or electronic format, the basic mockup is a carcass for the future prototype. Sometimes, this stage requires hours of brainstorming and debating to find the ultimate solution.

Stage 5: Behavior scenario and mind mapping.

Playing the behavior scenario helps to check if the possible users’ actions can be performed correctly. It’s the way to evaluate project usability, find and expel possible logical mistakes.

Mind mapping, in its turn, helps the developer to assort and organize key features into a coherent project, to outline the app/website’s workflow schematically.

Stage 6: Designing a prototype.

This is the final point, when the best practices from previous stages are formed into an interactive prototype, perfectly corresponding to your business needs and requirements.

So you could gain greater insight into the subject, AMgrade brings to your attention some sample interactive prototypes, which can be applied to several different business fields.

eCommerce

Click here to view the eCommerce website prototype.

Landing page

Click here to view the landing page prototype.

Entertainment

Click here to view the entertainment website prototype.

Mobile app

Interaction

Click here to view the mobile app prototype.

Canvas