A Guide to Create Fully-Functional Mockups
The new Porsche’s 911 GT3 prototype came out earlier this year in the vicinity of Nürburgring and the design is unlike anything we have ever seen.
Can you answer why the company invested millions of dollars in creating a prototype of the car before sending it directly into production?
It is understandable that it could be the best option for startups because it could save them money and time. But why do tech giants like Samsung and Apple also build prototypes to test their concepts?
Mockups, the main stage before the prototype, serve the same idea. You can envision your product that is to be built, test its functionalities, figure out angles, any spaces that are left, and figure out a scheme to super polish your design.
If you want to take your design to another level, functional mockups are a way to win your products. You can set design expectations that the development team can achieve and gather feedback from the stakeholders.
Organizations develop products that are customer-oriented because the involvement of customers in the production has become vital.
Companies do not want their products to fail since, in the end, their fate will eventually be decided by the customers.
So, organizations gather consumer feedback as early as possible, especially before the product development stage to avoid unnecessary expenses.
And that constructive feedback can only be gathered in two ways:
a) End-customers use the product
b) Functional Mockups
What are Functional Mockups?
The concept explains that an organization must create a mockup of its product to experience the design before the customer experiences it.
Most of the studies revealed that functional mockups allowed companies to determine the future of their product beforehand.
Furthermore, the production cost can be reduced, and there are fewer chances of financial losses.
It permitted them to not only gather stakeholders’ feedback but customers’ real-time feedback too.
Functional mockups are not static mockups; they look like a prototype that allows you to test the features of your design in real-time, and how they might end up functioning.
Do you know about static mockups? If not, then you can read our blog ‘are mockup static or dynamic’ to understand the term better.
Most of you undermine the value of functional mockups as they are labor-intensive, a bit costly, and time-dependent. But, we assure you that they are worth the efforts.
Nowadays, several companies on the web are offering free tools to build mockups without needing to code.
But let’s further talk about fully-functional mockups, in-depth.
Often times, it becomes hard to test a product once the designs have been completed. But, fully functional mockups can help you test the components of your products.
Functional mockups are a mix of both low and high-fidelity prototypes. You can have mockups designed by using low-quality material that is cheap and test it on initial customers for evaluation.
Though the functions used in the mockups are not the same as the final product, it does show almost all functions of the end-product.
Companies like to assess all the options in a fast and cheap way. Therefore, by using low-fidelity prototypes, for example, paper prototypes and experiential prototypes, they are used to test the main functions.
Later in the development, once the main roles have been verified, it is time to build fully functional mock-ups to gauge the whole functionality.
If the result were acceptable, then the prototype could even be used as a marketing tool for the company.
Why Design Functional Mockups?
Static mockups are best for envisaging your product designs. You can learn a lot about whether the design is exactly what you had hoped for or not. This is step one.
But the second step is to use functional mockups or a prototype to understand the functionalities in depth. Other than you start from scratch, adopt the step by step approach.
Because functional mockups can help sketch the closest prediction of the final product.
Additional benefits could be, you would get a go-ahead from the development team to get started with the development. At least, there will be a surety that the final product will be of the highest quality.
Final Words
Like we told you earlier that the web is full of tools to create mockups, but functional mockups are nothing like static mockups so you need professionals.
Mockup Machine can help you expand your idea into a detailed design so that your investors and your developers can actually understand it.
We can offer you a suitable service; you can have us do it all. We are fast, we know what we are doing, and we’ve been doing it for a long time.
You can connect with us here.
