Prototypes for client work

You'll finish with: A clickable prototype from a conversation.

Showing a client a working prototype beats describing one. It also stops you building the wrong thing for six weeks.

The three screens of any flow — a job-booking example

1️⃣StartThe list of jobs, and one obvious "Book a job" button
2️⃣DoThe booking form — the actual fields, with real-looking entries in them
3️⃣Done"Booked for Tuesday." And who got told about it.

Three screens is a flow, and a client can tell you a flow is wrong. One screen is a picture, and nobody argues with a picture.

What to prototype

Say plainly it's a prototype. Clients see something clickable and assume it's nearly finished. Tell them it's a drawing that happens to click, or you'll be explaining timelines later.

Prototype the argument, not the pixels

The point is finding out whether the flow makes sense. Three rough screens that answer that beat one polished screen that doesn't.

Do this now
  1. Pick something a client has described but nobody has drawn.
  2. Build three screens: where they start, the main thing they do, what they see when it works.
  3. Show it and ask "what's missing?" — not "do you like it?"
How to know it worked

The client points at something and says "no, that's not how we do it". That's the prototype paying for itself before anything got built.

If all you get is "looks great", you have shown them a picture rather than a flow, or they have read it as finished work and are being polite. Say the word prototype again and ask them to talk you through booking one real job on it, out loud, start to finish.

That's the course

Brand loaded once, decks briefed properly, prototypes standing in for six weeks of guessing.

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