How to Prototype… Fast and Better?
Published: 2020-08-12 14:43:36

![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/i/8ecovd617bc87l12znhd.jpg)
Suppose, you are taking a shot at your next huge venture, maybe a site or an application, that will be utilized by numerous individuals, and as far as its fruition is concerned, it will take months to get finished. This implies that you and your group will invest huge amounts of hours into that venture and remember those hours are not only hours, but those are also the billable hours for your designers, developers, and UX specialists.

Let's say, several months have passed and you are finished with your application. Really happy with it. You have followed the mantra, done is better than perfect. You realize it has a few blemishes yet you intend to fix it soon. You go for the beta testing of your product and tragically the input that has been given, is smashing. Now you realized that you really missed the things that are essential to the clients, yet at this stage, taking a shot at those missing pieces and afterward including them up, resembles the reconstructing of an application. Or then again the situation could be something like this, the UX experience is befuddling to such an extent that it makes the application unusable for the clients.

So long story short, whatever the issue is, you have squandered a really long time on something that has no ease of use. And now you need to go to work all again from the earliest starting point.

![Alt Text](https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1493836512294-502baa1986e2?ixlib=rb-1.2.1&ixid=eyJhcHBfaWQiOjEyMDd9&auto=format&fit=crop&w=700&q=80)
This happens a lot. With numerous items and with numerous new businesses, this is a significant basic circumstance faced by numerous organizations. Now the question is, could you have avoided this or even some of it? 

The appropriate response is yes! You could have done that essentially by building a prototype first.
Let's dive into it. What prototyping is all about?

###**Prototyping**###
Prototyping can just be characterized as the way towards building up a preliminary form of an item or its segments or its qualities that can help us in uncovering or explaining the necessities that are critical design contemplations.

The fundamental thought of building a prototype here is to comprehend the necessities. It should be built in such a way that utilizing this prototype, the client can get the real feel of the system or the product we are intending to create.

In straightforward words, we can say that prototypes are not the total systems and don't contain all the subtleties.

![Alt Text](https://media.giphy.com/media/Kzkap13LfJgo8/giphy.gif)

Prototyping is an appealing thought for muddled and large systems for which there is no manual procedure or existing systems to assist with deciding the necessities.

At the point when we manufacture a model, we really find the opportunity to test our product way before our team really begins to deal with it. It is a significant piece of making web or mobile applications. Building the model helps the developers, users, and designers to rapidly review user flow and design and give significant criticism on the most proficient method to execute and to improve it. It empowers us to distinguish the agony focuses ahead of time assuming any and furthermore give answers for it.
Prototyping comes under the umbrella of design thinking. Truth be told, it is one of the most significant plans thinking processes. Presently the prototype, depending upon the product, can be a basic pen or paper sketches or as perplexing as a rearranged coded rendition of a functioning app.

Prototyping also helps us in wasting not only our time but also a lot of our money. Because developing a product is not an easy task. It involves a lot of time and some very expensive work too.

A large number of you may imagine that prototyping can take a great deal of time because you think that you are using up all available time and don't have a lot to contribute to the real idea, so remember that a prototype doesn't need to include coding by any means. It can just be a mock-up done by your creator or UX expert depending on the plan of work.

While prototyping, one thing we have to remember is don't get too hung up on culminating a model. In doing so a few people lose seeing the bigger picture and therefore burn through their valuable time in something that truly needs their attention.

So here I will talk about a couple of ways that can help us in making our prototype faster and better simultaneously. Let's dig in ;)

![Alt Text](https://media.giphy.com/media/xT9IgfJvZIRccyV9iE/giphy.gif)

###**Be Resourceful**###
Regardless of how complex a software product we are making, it's not important to begin everything with a hi-fi completely functional materials lab. We should simply begin building.

*" Just start building it, you can start with paper cutouts." - Alan Nguyen, a business visionary, previous CEO of the Yan Group.*

Numerous designers mock-up a site or new application simply utilizing a paper, before putting any functionality to it. So the absolute first thing you have to do is be ingenious, be resourceful. Building a prototype, we are planned for flaunting one component or one element of the product. That component can be a design, a function, or perhaps both. So there is no compelling reason to go crazy and to design every single part of your product.

Huge numbers of the business people have gone along these lines by basically doing these in house mock-ups just to set aside their cash and time and guess what they have been successful too.

Bill Lucas, overseer of the educational program at the Luma Institute, himself once said that they urge business visionaries to simply experience their garbage drawers to discover the materials to build a prototype. One group working on a project cut Tylenol tabs in half to represent buttons; another working in a conference room turned coffee cups upside down and used them as knobs.

*"That sort of sharp creativity we find simply total gets a kick out of the individuals we put through these learning experiences," he says.*

###**Don't let perfection get into the way**###
*"Have no fear of perfection - you'll never reach it." – Salvador Dali*

Pursuing flawlessness or focusing a lot during the phase of prototyping can stop the architects and business people in their beginning phases of advancement. They invest a lot of energy contemplating something that can make the appearance of their product perfect and engaging instead of concentrating on the real highlights of the product and that is the place they commit an error.

*"It doesn't have to be perfect, as long as it conveys the idea of the full concept it's getting out, it's fine. Sometimes paper is better. You don't want someone to basically judge it because one is prettier than the other." startup adviser Amir Khella*

The point here is,  you have to think more like a hacker and less like a coder in these circumstances. Hackers realize how to assemble things rapidly, test them, and tackle issues. Along these lines, you can focus more on validating the idea of the product as opposed to agonizing over fixing bugs in the CSS code or different careful subtleties.

###**Don't be afraid to fail and focus on variables**###
*"Failure is only the opportunity to begin again, only this time more wisely."- Henry Ford*

Never scared of disappointment. Fall again and again but remember, never lose your core interest. You should be able to concentrate on featuring explicit highlights of your product. Consider others whose product is like yours and how you are superior to them. It's smarter to assemble 4–5 prototypes and afterward pick the one you discover great. Make the best prototype win ;).

Building a prototype doesn't need a perfectionist but an experimental mindset that does not cause you to lose focus but also encourages you to focus on the variables.

###**UI Kits… the ultimate road to better prototype**###
When it comes to building a prototype, faster and better, how one can forget about the UI kits, which is the simplest yet quicker and effective route for building mock-ups. 

UI kits are designed to make our lives easier and more peaceful by streamlining our design process. They are not only here to save our time and money but also make our prototype look much much better and consistent. Isn't it sound cool?

The UI kit is all tied in with placing power in the possession of designer, giving them the tools they have to gain ground in an ideal manner. That is the reason all the UI components in the UI kit have fundamental built-in interaction.  No additional time squandered on making the activity of dropdowns.

Designers want to create their own version. UI Kits do their own part offering them both free and paid templates, that designers can change. In any case, be it to concentrate on better ease of use when overseeing orders or making visuals that feature the things - here and there, you gotta do it without anyone's help. Because UI kits are developers' best friends.

![Alt Text](https://media.giphy.com/media/j0eBgazUSuoqS97N46/giphy.gif)

###**My approach**###
I don't have a clue what others' considerations are about Tailwind CSS, yet for my situation, it's my topmost preference. The utilization of utility classes doesn't just appear to be engaging yet additionally possibly overpowering. 

It's been a year that I am using Tailwind CSS professionally and I am totally gone gaga for it. It has improved my work process so a lot and that is the reason I thought to impart this in an article so I can share this knowledge with you.
The excellence of Tailwind CSS is that there is a range of preset values for everything. For instance, take color as an example. Utilizing Tailwind CSS, you don't have to figure out complete color palette heretofore, in light of the fact that tailwind will accompany 9 colors of each color. Let's suppose you don't like the specific color, don't worry, simply change the configuration.

Long story short, for me, Tailwind CSS is just an adoration.
Depending upon the sort of project, I sometimes make my own components and also sometimes utilizes the free components from the free repository for community components using Tailwind CSS. Here is a link for it.[I'm an inline link](https://tuk.dev/components) , 
and yes when I am dealing with a top-notch venture, I, for the most part, use TUK. 
[I'm an inline link](https://tuk.dev/). 

There are a few reasons why I picked TUK as my personal favorite tool to play with. The absolute first and furthermore significant explanation is, it can precisely reflect the thoughts that I have in my mind. I don't have to work much considering the designs. It provides me with the options of most ideal thoughts and that are also excessively exceptional in its own specific manner since it permits me to customize it the way I want to.  

I recently built a screen for my clients utilizing TUK components and it literally takes me around an hour. 
![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/i/huzi5u1bxsq1x5vbv70d.png)
*<figcaption>It contains a list of users in the branding department of the company with their stats for listening time, push rate and when they last logged out*
![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/i/31rmxrov97zozvg9bht7.png)
*<figcaption>This screen is part of the library, the first card shows the publishers that are publishing articles on your web app with a button to add more publishers giving them access to post.  The second card shows the posted articles with their image, category, title, date posted and author.*

In the first screen, the following components of TUK were utilized.
   1. Horizontal Navigation (Light With Nav Flushed Left)
   2. Page Heading (Simple With Breadcrumbs)
   3. Card heading (Tabs On Bottom)
   4. Grid Card (8 Col Listing With Search And Filter)

The second screen was built using the following components
   1. Grid Card (8 Col Listing Card With Action Button)
   2. Blog component (simple)
   3. And the horizontal navigation and page heading was used as 
      in the previous screen

Thus, I must add here is like all of us know building a prototype is itself a time saver in collecting early feedback, and using TUK to build a prototype was just like applying a time saver to a  time saver.

###**Conclusion**###
So before you decide not to build a prototype, allow me to remind you of the cerebral pains that are related to an unplanned project. Just keep one thing in mind, every minute that you spend on planning is better than those 3 minutes that you will spend on re-accomplishing something that you did unplanned. The prototype will help you in indicating every detail, each and every component tested and simultaneously endorsed as well, that will help you in NOT re-doing likewise later.