Bringing Apps to Life With InVision
Prototyping is a joy and a pain. You have nearly completed your design and then once it is prototyped it can be taken back to the drawing board for a bad user interface or experience. There is a wonderful app on the internet that is called InVision! It is an online platform for designers and developers to work with high fidelity comps and even wireframes if you so desire. It supports all of the responsive platforms to test a product, best of all is that it does not require coding. Designers rave over that.
I was introduced to InVision with a project that I was working on that had well over 2 dozen high fidelity comps that needed to be put together on a mobile, tablet and desktop platform to be tested. This app allowed me to upload all of the comps and test them quickly and in a real-time experience.
I created a website that was aimed at the local cycling community to bring riders together to create more camaraderie amongst riders. I was able to create 3 highly responsive prototypes to make this project come to life on all platforms.
I had to ask myself, why take another step to test something that has already been mapped out in sketches, wireframes and rough drafts? You have to think that by now you should have a perfect and polished product. Yeah no, far from. I was finding issues with this that I would not have found until this site was deployed. If I was running into issues after a site like this was deployed, it would kill the UX and functionality of it entirely.
I was able to show these to people and explain to them my idea in realtime without having to stress about a live site having an issue. InVision is an invaluable app to those within the UX community and also for developers to fully visualize the picture of what a designer wants them to piece together for the client. Communication is perfect between designers and developers, right? Not always, but this great tool can help that.
Conclusion
We have so many awesome tools to help us as designers and developers improve our skills and workflows. This is a great app that you can take to the client and show them why or why this does not work and they can follow what you mean. So many times a client can get so fixated on what they want, they forget that we are the ones who know the best approach to UX design and web development. Prototype all of your projects, it helps you become better in all of your aspects of work!
Parker Goodwin is a student in the Digital Media program at Utah Valley University, Orem Utah, studying Web & App Development. The following article relates to (InVision Prototyping) in the (DGM 2250 Course) and representative of the skills learned.
