Carson Gibbons
August 17, 2016
What is rapid prototyping?
Rapid prototyping is the process of quickly building a scale model for display to a client or partner, knowing that the prototype can be changed at a moment's notice. For a builder this could be an actual model, for a product it could be a mold model, and for an agency or development shop it could be a number of things. Many agencies will build rapid prototypes not just to display creative, websites & apps for clients, but to win the business in the first place by demonstrating a certain level of commitment to and understanding of the product or service at hand. Rapid prototyping allows the development team to participate in a faster feedback loop to get the best possible product while allowing the client to participate in the process. The constraints are usually time, money & technology infrastructure in terms of how that rapid prototype can be reviewed, and where.
How are agencies currently handling rapid prototyping?
In the creative agency world, there are numerous ways in which agencies will display creative work for their clients. Some have built proprietary galleries online that display comps pixel for pixel, some still print creative on 11" x 17" PDFs & others display a website example on a local server, hence forcing the clients of the agency to meet at the agency's offices for any type of digital presentation. There's nothing like displaying actual apps for clients to start planting vision seeds for how the creative will actually look and function in the wild.
Why use a web-based CMS?
Cosmic is the ideal tool for rapid prototyping. Rather than displaying an idea for an application or website on your local server with the clients in your office for a brief meeting, or having printed screenshots of an app for display, simply build your app and quickly deploy on the Cosmic App Server, making it available for review on any device that has an internet connection. The client(s) having access anywhere allows them to provide feedback in real-time while also allowing the agency to quickly iterate on a design, content piece or structural component. The app can then be edited according to the client's direction and re-deployed with a custom domain for actual usage by the client once the rapid prototyping phase is over.
Here are the three easy steps for agencies using Cosmic for rapid prototyping:
1. Integrate your GitHub repo with Cosmic
2. Set up as many buckets as you would need for your rapid prototyping projects
3. Deploy buckets as the rapid prototype becomes ready for review
Here are the three reasons Cosmic is best-suited for rapid prototyping projects:
1. No local server / stack set up to push to for display
2. Edit content in real time to adjust design accordingly (no lorem ipsum copy)
3. Once the rapid prototype is complete and approved, deploy on the Cosmic App Server with a custom domain
For more information on why Cosmic is the best solution for your rapid prototyping needs, read The Cosmic Stack to see the simplest content management stack on the market.
Cosmic is an API-first cloud-based CMS that gives developers and agencies portable, scalable & flexible content management solutions through its API that converts all content into JSON objects for consumption on any internet-connected device.
