Rapid Prototyping

Abstract

Human beings are visual creatures. The shiny new MacBook, glossy new sports car, or rare designer apparel instantly capture our attention. A product manager may have a crystal-clear idea of what the product looks like in their head even before formal design is kicked off, but it’s tough to communicate the vision to management or the team. If the team you’re on doesn’t have budget for a UI / UX designer before the software development cycle is kicked off, the product manager will absorb the responsibility of coming up with rough sketches of the end deliverable. Many of my PM colleagues don’t want to touch design tools like Balsamiq or Sketch because they fear it will require too much commitment to learn, but this chapter is designed to ramp you up to these software tools quickly so you can visualize your creativity in a short period of time. The wireframes and mocks aren’t expected to be world class, but it helps to supply mocks that act as a north star for the team so everyone is aligned on the draft form and function. Prototyping a tool can persuade stakeholders early in a way that words on a page can’t, and we’ll guide you through just enough of the features and functionality of industry-leading tools to craft a presentable wireframe or mock.