In this video, I’m going to give you 6 reasons why you should be using prototyping software to design your websites. Make sure you stick around to the end of the video for some bonus content, where I’ll give you my top recommendations for the best free software to use.
Introduction
If you’re like me, you’ve probably been designing your websites using tools like Elementor or Gutenberg, maybe even Photoshop or Illustrator. While that’s okay, it’s not the most efficient way of working. In this video, I’ll show you why using prototyping software like Figma or PenPot can not only make your workflow faster, but can also help to make you more profitable. Who doesn’t like more money in the bank?
Reason 1: Identify Design Problems Early
When we conceptualize something in our heads, it can often seem like a great idea. However, once we put it into a more concrete medium, such as on a piece of paper or a computer screen, it often turns out to be a poor design.
For example, let’s say you’re designing a web app card. You may start by adding everything you need into the design, which leads to an overwhelming end result.
You may be able to simplify the design or improve the user experience by changing the layout of some of the information. Replacing text buttons with simple, clean icons to convey the same end result.
A prototype design can quickly help us identify problems with our concepts so we can fix them before moving on and developing the site.
Reason 2: Improves The Quality Of The Website
Prototyping lets you tweak and refine the website to improve the overall quality before building and launching the website. During the prototyping stage, you can spend time testing the site’s overall usability. You can focus on checking key components, such as the site’s navigation & user flow.
Reason 3: Iterate More Quickly on a Design Concept
Crafting prototypes lets you quickly revise and improve your design concepts in a matter of minutes.
Using my initial example, I quickly identified some design issues that I wanted to address in the card layouts. I can now deploy and visually validate my proposed solutions to see if they solve my findings or if more work is needed to find the best solution.
Reason 4: Compare Design Variations Quickly
Creating a user interface (UI) is focused on identifying and creating solutions to allow the user to achieve a given task. To accomplish this, you’ll spend time defining and testing various ideas and solutions.
The easiest way to find the best solution is to compare several ideas by prototyping them. Here’s an example of how I streamlined my initial idea for managing the content in my web app, adding in the relevant components and revising them until I find the optimal design and configuration for the user.
Reason 5: Gathering Design Feedback Is Easier
If you need to spend time describing how an interface works, it will often be difficult to convey the many small details and finer points of the design that you may include in your solutions.
This often leads to miscommunication or poor feedback from users or a peer group.
By using prototypes, it is much easier for people to see your ideas and potential solutions, offering a much greater chance of getting the feedback you need to be useful and in line with your proposed ideas.
If you work alongside developers, they may be able to help pinpoint potential issues in your designs and provide additional solutions for those issues.
Reason 6: Prototyping is Cheap, Quick & Easy
One of the most obvious reasons to prototype your designs is simple – there’s very little reason NOT TO. You can integrate it into most design processes with very little interruption.
No matter how you currently design your ideas, from paper notebooks to using a tool like Photoshop or Elementor, using one of the apps I’ll cover in the bonus section should make the process even easier and quicker.
If you prefer to use a web app, I’ve got suggestions for you to cover that. If you prefer to be able to work ‘offline’, I’ve got you covered there too!
Okay, now I’ve given you my 6 top reasons to prototype your next design, let me introduce you to my recommendations.
Bonus Content
As a bonus, here are my 3 top recommendations for free prototyping tools you can start using right away. Each of these is tools I use myself and have found them to be both relatively easy to learn and also produce amazing results.
Figma: The industry standard.
Lunacy: Solid integration.
Penpot: Just raised $8 million in funding.