Three Rapid Prototyping Tools For Large-Scale Businesses
Every product manager loves to try new things out. Once your roadmap is set up, it’s time to start getting your “hands dirty” with rapid prototyping. This is when you truly start to understand your product’s capabilities – refining your early assumptions and applying learnings to create your first version.
As we all know, things can’t get done fast enough these days. Simply put, it feels like there’s never enough time to get anything right. In the case of prototyping, product managers will rush through early concept generation. As a result, the “rapid” in rapid prototyping becomes an obstacle for building great products.
Fortunately, there are ways to effectively build quality prototypes in a timely manner. We will highlight three tools used by large product teams for rapid prototyping.
BALSAMIQ: The Napkin Sketch Game Changer
Balsamiq is a rapid wireframing software that mimics paper sketching backed up by an ingenious digital platform. This tool makes it easy to create, share, modify, and get feedback on product mockups. The interface intentionally works with a sketch-like appearance to emphasize functionality and feel instead of minor details.
No matter how large and successful an enterprise becomes, basic principles still count (perhaps even more than before). Keeping prototype creation processes simplified and focused on the essentials is what makes Balsamiq great. All the power of a big name will never guarantee customer acceptance. Instead, product teams must fully leverage their hard-earned brand equity with a product based on well-crafted content and interactions.
INVISION: Everybody’s Prototype
A powerful rapid prototyping tool, InVision allows you to transform designs into clickable, interactive prototypes complete with gestures, transitions, and animation. The tool also allows for live desktop or mobile collaboration including the LiveShare feature – a real-time presentation and whiteboarding tool. Users can even submit feedback directly on the prototype and keep everything in one place.
With the speed of market change, the large enterprise must maintain its focus more than ever. Keeping all collaborators on the same page (in multiple time zones) is an everyday challenge. InVision solves this for prototype development by coupling excellent creation tools with interactive feedback in the same space. You simply access the prototype, add your comment, and move on. If desired, you can also integrate InVision with roadmapping software to fold the process into your global vision.
ORIGAMI STUDIO: Power to the People
Origami Studio is a prototype building tool created by Facebook. This free, open source tool allows teams to build sophisticated user interfaces without any development skills needed. It’s the same tool used to build Facebook, Messenger, and Instagram – so you know it’s capable. Live on-device views make it easy to get a true feel for the prototype. Sharing is as simple as sending the file to any team member or client who is using Origami Studio.
Prototype generation doesn’t require anything more than Origami Studio, which meets the needs of a variety of enterprise companies. There’s even an example gallery that lets you download prototypes directly from the Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger playbooks. Origami Studio is the pure creator play which will delight your visionaries. The lack of collaboration features can be easily solved by roadmapping software. When it comes to rapid prototyping, Origami Studio offers top-grade performance.
Through mParticle’s work with product teams at large-scale organizations, we’ve seen the immediate benefits that these tools can deliver. By taking the complexity out of creating and sharing prototypes, these tools enable product teams to produce high-quality concepts without sacrificing efficiency. As a result, product teams are able to focus on a vital step in the product lifecycle that is way too important to rush or compromise an opportunity to truly get it right.
About the speaker
David Spitz is the Chief Marketing Officer at mParticle - leading the company's Product Marketing, Demand Generation, Branding, Communications, and Sales Development teams. Prior to joining mParticle, David led the digital strategy team at WPP and worked at Deloitte as a consultant. David holds an MBA from Columbia University and currently lives in New York City.