3 min read

The Case for Rapid Prototyping With Unqork

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With Unqork, your prototype can become your final product, saving you time and money as you create the application you need.


When your business has an idea for a web application idea, there are a variety of approaches you can take to bring it to life. You can start with UX sketches, brainstorm with a Product team, or simply begin by discussing the target customer. Regardless of where you start, most enterprises end up using a traditional code-based development approach to bring it to fruition.

Building with code, however, is time-consuming and requires a huge investment in terms of upfront costs, legacy maintenance, and increased technical debt down the road. That’s why there’s value in seeing a proof of concept early on to help guide your team and justify your investment before going too far along. Seeing a prototype before committing to development can help your team align on the function of the application, anticipate any potential issues, and iron out lingering questions before kickstarting a long, expensive project. 

The Benefits of Prototyping

In a typical prototyping phase, designers and developers build models of the product, which can range from a pencil-and-paper drawing to an interactive wireframe. Prototyping flips the standard trajectory of an enterprise application project and tackles design and user experience first. This approach has numerous advantages. 

In the above demonstration, see how rapidly Creators can build a functioning solution.

Prototyping allows business and IT teams to collaborate more effectively in the development process and ensure that engineers understand exactly what they need to build during later stages of development. Teams can also use prototypes to get early feedback and make any necessary changes to a design before wasting time and money on a non-viable application. From a sales perspective, teams can show investors and prospective customers what the application will look like and how it’ll work, which can help them raise money or generate interest in the project while it’s still in development. 

The Drawbacks of Prototyping

Despite the value prototyping can add, it won’t entirely protect your investment and guarantee you’re satisfied with the end product. The most pertinent disadvantage of traditional prototypes is that they are representations. They’re not built to be fully functional or true to the final product, which can catch team members or stakeholders by surprise if the finished product doesn’t look or perform exactly as they expected based on the prototype. 

What’s more, it inevitably requires more time and money to start with a prototype, even if it does save you from having to go back to the drawing board later on. Although prototyping aims to minimize costs by allowing your team to align on a common vision early on—instead of potentially scrapping progress at a later point—prototyping still adds initial cost and time to an already tight schedule. What teams really need is a new way to prototype that allows them to explore a concept and build out fully functional models without extending project timelines and budgets.

The Unqork platform makes it possible to build a fully functional prototype within a matter of hours—not just a representation. 

How No-Code Offers a Better Way to Prototype

With no-code, teams reap all of the benefits of prototyping (and more!)—with none of the drawbacks. The Unqork platform makes it possible to build a fully functional prototype within a matter of hours—not just a representation. The business team can partner directly with IT to ensure that their Unqork Creators understand what needs to be built, eliminating the time that would have been spent designing something non-functional and purely demonstrative. 

Even better, adjusting for iterative feedback as you build your Unqork prototype is quick and easy. Instead of having UX designers incorporate feedback into wireframes, you can make direct changes to a no-code prototype that will eventually become your final product. The changes you make in Unqork will be reflected immediately—no more revising wireframes and then sending changes to a developer, hoping the dozens of lines of code will achieve the desired effect. And because your functional prototype will become your web application, all the time spent perfecting your prototype shaves down your project timeline.

Rapid prototyping with Unqork no-code goes above and beyond standard prototyping because it allows you to combine UX, design, and development into one intuitive platform. In the time it would take you to design mock-ups and HTML prototypes, you can have a fully functioning product that opens up doors with investors and stakeholders. Using Unqork to prototype and build allows you to innovate and produce within the same environment, saving you time and helping you create a final product you’ll be proud of. 

Interested in learning more about how no-code can be used in your organization? Schedule a personalized demonstration with one of our in-house experts and sign up for the Unqork newsletter to receive no-code news in your inbox.

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