Prototyping

A prototype simulates how a product behaves — screens linked together so a person can click through a real task — without the cost of building it for real. Fidelity ranges from rough tapping-through-wireframes to near-production mockups with working transitions.

The purpose is to learn early. A prototype turns a debate into a test: put it in front of users, watch them attempt the flow, and fix the problems while they are still cheap. It is the bridge between wireframing and engineering, and the raw material for usability testing.

In practice

Before committing a sprint to a new pricing flow, a designer links twelve mockups into a clickable prototype and puts it in front of five prospects with a task: “pick the plan that fits your team.” Two can't find annual billing; one reads the middle tier as “per company” when it's per seat. The fixes cost a day in Figma. The same lessons learned in production would have cost an engineering sprint plus a support-ticket wave — the prototype paid for itself before launch.