Our brain generates hundreds or even thousands of ideas on a daily basis. Still, not all of them are ingenious or at least deserving a second thought. The same goes for your app ideas. As with any business idea, your app idea should be validated and future-proofed. In other words, you need to ensure your app won’t fall flat during the very first stages of its development or end up being useless. That is where a Proof of Concept, or PoC, comes in and saves the day. Today’s article is concerned with this essential step of your app development process and attempts to answer all common questions about a software proof of concept. So, let’s get into it.
A Few Words about PoC
At the very beginning of your app development journey, you need to figure out whether your app idea is viable for practical implementation. You want to gather evidence and take note of the points where your product can satisfy the purpose it is designed for. At this point, you need to figure out how your product will be rolled out into deployment, how it will function, which resources need to be deployed to make this happen, identify the major design weaknesses, etc. (To learn more about designing great apps, visit URL.)
Also, it’s necessary to clearly identify your target audience, people that will be using your app, which is impossible without an effective PoC strategy. By utilizing the proof of concept, you’ll be able to determine which tools or tech stack you’ll require to put your idea into practice and weigh the odds of its being successfully adopted by users.
Why is PoC Important?
The odds that you can set up a successful entrepreneurial venture without a strong business plan are slim at best. So are your chances of developing a successful app if you don’t put enough time and effort into creating a proof of concept. You may start simple – just jot down the reasons why you think your idea can succeed in today’s market. Needless to say, you need to do a thorough market research and take a look at your competition. Once you do that, you’ll be able to determine whether your app idea is feasible and thus can be successfully pitched to investors. At this stage, you can also estimate development expenses and decide if you can actually afford to develop the app you’ve envisioned.
An important component of your PoC process is testing your app idea with potential users. Put out the feelers to get to know your potential users and learn what they think about your idea. Will your app be able to solve their problems? Consider interviewing people to learn what they are looking for in apps. Should you discover that your idea is not popular with the target audience or that you cannot afford implementing all the features you wanted to, don’t hesitate to reconsider your app idea, make necessary tweaks and see how the improved version works.
What Happens Next?
Once you’re done with your PoC, you can move on to the next stages of your app development process. And prototyping is one of them. You want to create a prototype for your app, which will reflect its logic and style. As a result, you will get a tentative model of your app, which demonstrates all the UI elements your customers will be interacting with. After that, you want to create a MVP for your product, which will reflect your app’s core functionality and showcase essential features your potential customers might be particularly interested in. Thus, you will create a fully-functional product capable of immediately addressing the major pain points and lay the groundwork for future iterations of development.
Now that you know about the benefits of a PoC, you will definitely want to create one for your own digital product or service. This will help you get the picture of the product life cycle, set realistic goals and deadlines, see how real-life users can interact with your creation and thus set your app on a path to a successful launch.
