Coming up with unique ideas and developing designs for your website, mobile applications and games isn’t a cake walk that can be achieved with just a few sessions. Designing a website, mobile application or a game doesn’t restrict only to technical aspects, it also involves a lot of imagination, execution, idea generation and innovation with a pinch of technicalities. You need to give your 100% and carry out rigorous usability tests in order to come up with a functionally appropriate and graphically swoon-worthy application and website.
Paying close attention to the researchers and studies regarding the various iterations of the development process, designing grabs 30% of the entire development process. So now you can understand what significance does design scores when it comes to application development. Designing is the core and critical activity when it comes to website or application development. Also, to spice the things up, it is essential and absolutely necessary to incorporate pre-determined industry standards and benchmarks while creating Wireframes, Prototypes, and Mockups.
But even some of the professional web designers, IT professional and non-professionals included are using these design these deliverables synonymously. They still have this misconception that a wireframe, prototype, and mockup are all same- a rough layout, outline or sketch of an idea. But let us make one thing absolutely straight; though wireframe, prototypes and mockups serve a simple purpose of representing a sample design, they still have lots of differences between each other.
Today in this blog, the experts of a highly proficient Web Designing Company in Delhi would like to clear out some of the cow webs pertaining to the meaning of Wireframes, Prototypes, and Mockups.
Let’s start with Wireframe
Wireframe
A Wireframe is a graphic representation of a user interface of a website or an application devoid of any visual design or branding concepts. It is just a simple blueprint or layout around which your website or application will revolve. Wireframe acts as the foundation for your design, making it quite simple, smooth and streamline the process of layout generation based on how would you like consumers to take in the information provided. Think of a wireframe in terms of building a house. The architects need to draw a layout based on which paint and furnishings will be dome. Similarly, a wireframe is a floor plan for your website, which further needs skilled hands of UX, UI and IxD designers.
Simple points to make you understand Wireframes
- Contains only main information of a website or an application.
- Giving application designers a foundation on which they can begin working on multiple screens.
- Using these wireframes as a reference source to carry out functional specifications.
Advantage of wireframe
Creating wireframes is the first and the simplest task when beginning the development process. It is extremely fast and cost-effective. The development of wireframes involves the use some simple and handy tools like pencil, pen, and paper. In comparison to a detailed, informative and complete high fidelity wireframes, low fidelity wireframes are much easier to develop and more important. And you know why? Because users are hardly concerned about the aesthetic characters of how well you are serving elements like software functionality, information architecture, user experience, user interface and applications usability. Plus, you can easily make as many changes as you like without hampering the coding and graphics editing.
Prototype
The best and the most simplistic definition of a prototype for the highly acknowledged Website Development Company in Delhi is “A stimulation, sample or testing version of a final product which goes through rigorous usability testing prior to launch.” The main objective of developing a prototype is to test the applications or application ideas before investing the required time and budget into the final product. The prototype is a crucial step before the final launch of the product because it gives designers and developers an opportunity to kick aside impending usability and functionality issues. It also provides areas that need more work and improvement with a clear solution served by the users. Once a sample version of your product is in the hands of the users, you can finally see how users actually perceive your product as. You have the time and resources to make the modifications according to the feedback provided by the user group.
Prototype is laced with 4 main qualities
- Representation: Whether it is a “mobile” or “paper” version or “HTML” or “desktop”.
- Precision: How detailed, informative, polished and refined the prototype is.
- Interactivity: Are all the functions open to the users or are they partially functional or view-only.
- Evolution: Is the prototype going to be evolved into a final product or it will be thrown away and replaced with an improved version.
Advantage of Prototype
Prototyping has a huge role to play when conducting usability testing. Such a thorough stimulation of the final interactions develops great material to check the usability of the interface, prior to the commencement of the actual development process. Prototyping when done right and at the very early stage helps in saving a lot of development time and cost. So, a prototype is a great medium to test the final product for designers and developers. The objective of developing prototype is quite simple, to start an interaction between the user and the application interface as smoothly as possible. When a user presses a button, make sure the corresponding action must be carried, so that the users can get the full gist of the product experience. There is quite a number of prototyping tools that can develop prototypes quickly and in no time, without any coding.
Mockups
Mockups are the alive and realistic version of the wireframes. They are graphically more stunning with the inclusion of colors, fonts, themes, buttons, logo etc. When entering the mockup phase, every minute detail of the design and interface is defined such as labels of the field, notes, font types, navigation menu, etc. A mockup is more of a static layout of the page and it showcases how the final product will come out like. It is an exact replica of how the website pages and mobile applications will look like.
A well structured-mockup:
- Represents the framework of the information, more visual elements to display content and showcases the basic website or application functionalities in a static way.
- Allows users to intercept the visual side of the website or application.