The $1 Prototype: Lean Mobile UX Design and Rapid Innovation for Material Design, iOS8, and RWD

 

IS IT POSSIBLE TO…

• Address the #1 reason mobile apps fail: the lack of market need for their product?
• Create clean, consistent mobile interface that also reflects your app’s unique personality?
• Finish innovative mobile design in less than 3 weeks, with complete confidence that it works?

Indeed, and much more. All At the cost of… About $1.

The $1 Prototype is the result of five years of obsessive quest to perfect a lightweight mobile design methodology. It contains the collective wisdom of more than 50 events, workshops, and university courses in 10 countries and intensive design work with Fortune 500 clients and startups, which resulted in multiple featured apps in both Apple App Store and Android Play Store. From Silicon Valley to Tel-Aviv and Dubai, Greg Nudelman, author of 4 mobile UX design books, fixated on one question:

For all things mobile, what’s the most effective way to produce a design that works?

Hundreds of case studies later, this book contains the answers.
From Android Material Design and iOS8 to Responsive Web Design (RWD) — it’s all here, and it all works.

YOU WILL LEARN HOW TO:

ENVISION:

• Ask the why: ‘are we building the right product’, before the how: ‘how to build the product right’
• Translate insights from research into design decisions for a brand new or existing product or service
• Avoid the common traps that block teams and start-ups from pivoting, especially with opposed business objectives

PROTOTYPE:

• Style your app or website with the right style for a given component (Spinner, Toolbar, Search, etc.)
• Save *months* by designing and prototyping at the same time
• Escape the clutches of a “Windows developer” mindset and focus on the unique UX features of mobile-first solutions

TEST:

• Inject the focus on customer outcomes into the core of your team or client relationship
• Keep user research lean, accessible and readily available… while eliminating overhead
• Ensure that the right people are aware of the results at the right time
• Ensure that you remain the project designer, even when everyone “knows” UX

COLLABORATE:

• Help your team create a joint set of goals, so decisions come from a shared perspective
• Encourage lean “from the gut” calls, while avoiding intractable arguments
• Implement lean user feedback into an agile sprint
• Phase-match the UX design efforts with code development so they can inter-dependently create together

This book is the only reference you need to experience first-hand how to “do it all” for our product teams: how to keep your deliverables manageable, keep all of the project “balls” in air, how to communicate results, how to “train” your team so the easy stuff is tackled…  and you can work on the creative, fun, HARD STUFF!

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. The book uses a unique “Question & Answer” format to answer 31 key questions, and provides 4 real-world case studies and hours of live-action video.

The techniques in $1 Prototype are the EXACT SAME techniques used by Google to create the Material Design “Digital Paper” and to instruct their very select group of startups at Google Ventures.  And now you can take these lean, modern mobile innovation techniques and apply them to your own project.

You don’t need expensive design software, time-consuming deliverables and extensive documentation. You need simple, compelling UX techniques that produce immediate results.

That’s exactly what The $1 Prototype delivers.

“Provides a wealth of resources to up your game by working with your users to develop great RWD sites or apps… contains a host of practical examples that you can implement from day one… One of the big pluses for me from the Prototype step is how this fits great with Google’s new ‘material design‘ approach. A couple of different colored notes and maybe a set of round stickers and you have a instant floating action bar…. This book can be a great resource for single practitioners or teams. I can see it fitting in with both Agile and Waterfall environments and provides a wealth of resources to up your game by working with your users to develop great RWD sites or apps.”

— David

“If you are looking for a new low-fidelity prototyping method or are new to prototyping in general this is an accessible, easy to use method that will allow you to get going fast. If fact unlike so many other methods Greg’s method can be used soon after starting the book because each step provides immediately actionable advice… can be used almost as soon as you start reading the book….Whether you are new to prototyping, want to modify or replace your current prototyping method or just want to investigate new ideas that may help your current prototyping method I can recommend this book.”

— Christopher

“… as useful as it gets when it comes to mentoring would be designers in prototyping… contains all the ideas you’ve often thought about but never quite done. Everything makes so much sense you often find yourself wondering, why don’t I do that, or yeah I’ve thought of that too… The tools introduced are simple, effective and the direction given is just as earnest and useful… rich in advice, suggestions, and examples all of which help you to become far more effective at prototyping, iterating and building understanding before the final design… Highly recommended”

— Don