What is a Mockup & Why do we need one ?

A Mockup is a visual representation of how a designer or a team of designers wants a finished website or web application to look when it’s completed in much more detail than a wireframe or a basic prototype. Mockups are considered almost finished designs that are still open for feedback and iterations from users or stakeholders. They are a great way to create a finalized design for the stakeholders to review but still bring in changes if required, unlike the finished design. In this article, we will discuss what a Mockup is? its importance along with some best practices to keep in mind while designing Mockups.

What is a Mockup?

A Mockup is a visual representation of how a designer or a team of designers wants a finished website or a web application to look when it’s completed in much more detail than a wireframe or a basic prototype. A Mockup is different from a wireframe since a wireframe is the structure or the layout that emphasizes items whereas a Mockup not only has the website structure and layout, but also colors, fonts, and the look and feel of a completely designed website.

Mockups are considered almost finished designs that are still open for feedback and iterations from users or stakeholders. They are a great way to create a finalized design for the stakeholders to review but still bring in changes if required, unlike the finished design. Mockups can be designed using designer tools like Photoshop, Sketch, Adobe XD, Figma, etc.

Importance of Mockups

• Representing final design: Mockups are a good representative of the final project. Mockups are a great way to create a finalized design representing how to website would look in production. Having a Mockup means the design is almost finalized and would only have some minor changes added to the design after that.
• Covering the visual aspect of design: A Mockup is a visual representation of how a designer or a team of designers wants a finished website or a web application to look when it’s completed in much more detail than a wireframe or a basic prototype. It is very similar to the final website hence it becomes easier to test, analyze, present, etc.
• Wireframes are not enough: Wireframes are detailed structural sketches that illustrate a concept. A wireframe for a digital product is similar to a blueprint for a house. Wireframe clearly illustrates how the product functions and the core elements of its design but one thing where the wireframes lack is the visual aspect. Wireframes don’t create visuals hence having Mockups in many cases becomes a better alternative that includes visuals as well as proper project structure.
• Stakeholder’s review: Designers need to present the final design to the stakeholders and implement the feedback from them. Mockups are a great way to present a fully designed website or web application to the stakeholders, take feedback from them and implement it resulting in the final design.
• User testing: Usability testing is actually a research method for assessing how easy it is for participants to complete the important tasks in a design. Mockup is a great way of testing the web design that includes everything from the website structure to visuals in a real-life setting.

Best Practices

• Wireframing is crucial: Wireframing is crucial for a Mockup, and if done right it leaves a very less scope of things going wrong in the Mockup design. Once a wireframe is done, we have to add the visual elements like graphics, Typography, color etc. and after some iterations we can obtain a professional Mockup.
• Content Hierarchy and Organization: When you are designing any Mockup be it physical or digital, make sure that the content Hierarchy and the organization of content is in such a way that the USP – every product has a Unique Selling Proposition, Make sure to highlight this unique selling proposition.
• Consistency: In some cases, the user experience and the interface of the Digital product is different for different screens. It might depend upon the stage of the company/startup or the market but the user should not find the Digital product to be completely different from the branding website or application. For this you can create separate Mockups of different screens but with the same theme and similar structure.
• User feedback and iterating: Taking feedback from the users can provide valuable insights about the Mockup design and what things should be improved. In order to improve your Mockup we must take user feedback as well as feedback form the stakeholders and iterate our design.
• Focusing on key interface properties like:
  • Contrast: Contrast helps the User Interface in establishing the content/visual hierarchy, emphasizing a focal point and adding visual interest.
  • Alignment and Proximity: Alignment is direction of element flow and Proximity is closeness of the elements. Alignment and proximity brings order in unordered typography.
  • Repetition: Repetition is basically how many times patterns, visuals, or other properties are being repeating in the UI to give user an application that is easy to navigate.

Conclusion

A Mockup is a visual representation of how a designer or a team of designers wants a finished website or a web application to look like when its completed in much more detail than a wireframe or a basic prototype. It is a more presentable format for the stakeholders who do not belong to design background making it a better choice than having a wireframe since wireframes can be complicated for clients from background other than design. Make sure to follow the points we discussed in this article in order to create a professional looking Mockup for your next project.