For the development of my mobile app, I have briefly outlined below my plan for the initial prototyping phase and the three steps I will take in this process. These prototyping plans may change depending on my ongoing research, but currently this is what I want to do.
User Flow/Journey
Before I begin to create anything pertaining to the interface, I need to establish the initial structure of the app. Specifically, I would like to start planning the sequencing and terminology that will be used. The user flow would begin at the home screen of the app and depict the paths and journey’s users could take to reach a certain goal or task. I may outline a few specific and key tasks and show the user flow pertaining to them. This will ultimately allow me to see if what I am doing is straightforward or not since one of the goals of the app is for it to be fairly minimal and not very time-consuming. Thus, I will need to design the user flow in a way where it would be easy for any type of user to utilize, regardless of who they are. Likely, these user flows are going to be very brief based on the intended “bare bones” design of my app. My ongoing research will inform more of the decisions in my app and therefore this will not necessarily be a finalized structure, but instead an initial draft of my plans. The main goal of this is to establish simplicity and straightforwardness. These flows should be very brief.
Wireframes & A/B Testing?
For my second prototyping phase, I would like to begin envisioning what the app may look like on the screen, but in a very simplistic way. Likely these would be paper wireframes for the app of maybe the home screen and some of the key functions. From my user flows, I will at least have some idea of how I want to sequence the app and can therefore create some initial wireframes that will begin to establish the interface. I’m not sure yet if I want to create multiple wireframes of the same screen and possibly do some A/B testing to see how people feel about the designs. These will be low/medium fidelity wireframes.
High-fidelity home screen page
For my final prototyping phase (at least for this semester) I’m thinking I want to create a high-fidelity prototype for the home screen of my app. This is something I feel would come more towards the end of my development, however instead of focusing on a polished result I instead just want to experiment with stylistic elements. The first two prototypes involve a lot more planning and UX writing, rather than any visual design elements. In this phase I would like to experiment with color schemes, typography, shapes, symbols, etc. so that when I actually make the final design of the app I will have some experience and insights from this prototype. I mostly view this as an initial draft of the interface, however there is a chance I follow through with many of the elements I design if they end up being what I want.