SOFTWARE DESIGN

Prototyping mobile applications, Internet services, and other digital projects is a key stage in the development of any software products. It allows you to visually present and, if necessary, adjust all the requirements of the technical specifications. Prototyping translates the formal and informal wishes of the customer, presented in the form of text, dictaphone records, and sets of illustrations, into a thoughtful and clearly designed prototype of a digital product.

The development of digital services and network services, whether it is the creation of mobile or web solutions in the field of Internet commerce, online banking, accounting, services, construction or logistics, is based on an object-oriented approach. This approach allows us to present a digital service as of a set of software objects with certain features.

The interaction of objects and their characteristics determine the logic of the digital service.

In other words, we can say that any digital solution can be easily displayed not only in the form of program code or executable files but also in graphical representation as a prototype of the product. The latter is a set of visual flowcharts, transition diagrams, logical interface elements, and design layouts.

By analogy with building design, software design makes it possible to depict the architecture of a software product. Therefore, software engineers are even called software or system architects.

A clear understanding of digital product logic allows you to translate customer requirements into a language understandable to developers and not to be mistaken in choosing the platform and technologies that will be used for development. Prototyping makes it possible to clearly define the time frame, budget and workload of specialists who are planned to be involved in the project.

The prototype of a digital product is the main part of the technical task. Its creation takes an average of 2 weeks to 1 month. Moreover, at the prototyping stage, as well as at the stage of the initial statement of TOR, customer involvement is extremely important.

The customer usually does not know programming basics and logic of the digital product work, so they should be describes quite objectively to him. The way imagines system operation is sometimes difficult to describe in words. Even successfully and clearly presented description of a digital system can be misunderstood. Developers may not fully understand the general requirements of the technical specifications.

Of course, any mistake can be fixed and misunderstanding eliminated. But if you do this in the later stages of development, when the design is ready and writing and testing the program code is taking place, fixing the error will be very costly. After all, the whole process initially went the wrong way with the wrong logic.

But if you describe, analyze and visualize the structure and logic of the digital solution at the design stage, the efficiency and terms of software development will optimally increase.

We use the multi-functional online editor Moqups to prototype digital products. This tool makes it possible to present a software solution in the form of a set of graphic templates representing pages or windows of an application. In this case, between pages and windows, you can immediately set the links and directions of transitions.

On each of the of the project pages, you can place all kinds of functional blocks, logical elements, and tools for displaying content, such as:

• buttons, switches, drop-down lists, sliders, and other elements of the functional choice;
• headings, text blocks, tables, links, and tools for placing and formatting information;
• icons, avatars, lines, custom images, and all kinds of design elements.

To arrange the layout of a digital product, all these elements are placed in the working area of ​​the prototype windows (pages), setting their features, changing the shape, size, color, and other parameters. An important advantage of the Moqups.com tool is that you can add clarifying comments to any block, which facilitates the interaction between developers, designers, the customer, and other specialists.

The final prototype provides a high-level simulation of the website operation, mobile application or other type of digital service. Interactivity and visualization of logic allow you to carefully think out the software framework of the future digital product at the software design stage.

To create relatively simple digital solutions, and also if the customer has experience in software development and can fully and in detail describe the logic of the software product, prototyping can be omitted.

In this case, you can simply write an expanded TOR in the form of text and illustrations. However, in all other cases, when creating custom and professional digital solutions, the software design phase makes it possible to save time significantly, and hence the budgets that will be spent on development.

We have sufficient experience and ready-made examples of the development of online services prototypes, applications, software, and sites of different architectures.

The use of these developments in new digital products increases the efficiency of software design, maintains reliable feedback from the customer and the executors. It allows to obtain better software at the output.