Prototyping is a fundamental part of your digital product design process journey. After you’ve decided what problem you would like to solve, or what market segment to cater to, you should have a general idea or a framework for the product you would like to create. This is where prototyping tools come into the picture.
To incite interest both from the side of potential investors and customers, it is paramount to have at least a visual representation of the planned product. It does not need to function, just to show how it would look like. There are countless numbers of such solutions, so let’s have a look at the best prototyping tools.
Must-have functionalities
So what makes the best prototyping tools? As a golden rule, you should always have some functionalities present in your chosen solution(s). During our daily work, we tend to work with software that is cross-platform, easy to use, and collaborate either internally or with third-party applications.
You do not want to use cumbersome solutions, that may not work properly on other platforms and you also do not want to get into anything that has a way too steep learning curve.
It is vital to have the planned navigational elements, buttons, and menus (and the associated interactions and hierarchy) as close as possible to the final product. By following this guideline you can save time and money by avoiding unnecessary redos. It is easy to get lost in some many solutions on the market, so let’s have a look into 2 of the ones that we’ve been working with!
Figma & Balsamiq
Our designers have been using Figma during their daily routines. It can easily turn any static design into a showable prototype. It is cross-platform, and it can save time with its’ integrated templates and toolkits. It is also perfect for collaboration, enabling high team integrity and teamwork.
Another app in our shed of proven prototyping tools is Balsamiq. It’s an absolute breeze to work with, its superfast drag-and-drop-based GUI makes it super easy to learn and use, so there is no need for long and tedious tutorials and documentation. However, while it covers all the other crucial aspects, namely being easy to learn and use, it severely lacks functionalities. It is still a tad bit rough around the edges and a more sophisticated solution could be a lot better option when pitching to stakeholders and potential investors.
