Spend $1, save $99
Product Development is expensive.
Yet some clients want to jump right into building a feature. Without validating the User needs–requirements are written, sent to Development, and pushed to Production (with a lot of additional steps in between).
That process costs a lot of money.
Features should be validated, prototyped and tested before being built for Production. Not only for a better User Experience, but also for a greater monetary return on the Product lifecycle. Every dollar invested in User Experience yields a return between $2 and $100 . Validating ideas and features with Users, can and will, save a large amount of money for the company.
Prototypes
Prototypes can be, and should be, built cheaply. There is a plethora of prototyping tools available for use, that range from bare bone outline boxes to detailed UI components, that allow for easy layout manipulation. I often prefer these tools, over HTML/CSS prototypes, to help avoid prototype code from being merged into the production branch.
These prototypes are tested with Users, the results and data are recorded, and then the prototypes are revised and tested again. If or when the feature is validated, it is brought into the Development lifecycle. If the feature is never validated, the prototype can be discarded. You can rest easily knowing that you’ve spent a few thousand dollars validating an idea; instead of burning tens of thousands of dollars forcing a non-needed feature into the product.
Spend $1, and at minimum, double your money. Talk about a worthy investment.
A few of the popular prototyping tools are:
Check out even more UX tools at http://uxdesign.cc/ux-tools/
