Using prototypes in app design

I’ve always been fond of creating functional prototypes when designing apps. There are a number of advantages over simply documenting what the app should do:

• It means that the users (e.g. clinicians) get to try out something that actually works (sort of) before ‘signing off’ on the requirements. This reduces the chance of delivering something that doesn’t quite meet their needs.
• It helps significantly with the FHIR design. Assuming that the app actually communicates with a FHIR back end (which can be one of the freely available reference servers such as HAPI), then it validates the resource design (which resources are needed and their profiling) as well as the API’s that are going to be needed. This can be quite a tricky step to implement depending on what the real back end is going to be.
• It’s much simpler and quicker to develop than anything that needs to be ‘production ready’. For example, you don’t generally need to implement any security or handle the errors that need to be allowed for in a real application.
• It delivers solid requirements to the development team, as well as a test app that they can use as the API is developed.

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