At MobileThinking we are promoting fast prototyping guided development. In order to constantly increase our efficiency, we decided to apply rapid prototyping techniques at least once a month for our own pleasure!

As passionate developers, entrepreneurs and learners, we are dedicating one day per month to have fun developing a simple concept/app/project in only 8 hours!

As part of our Creative Fridays, we imagined an app to give you peace of mind!

In three little steps, it allows you to store your warranties and get notified a bit before they expire.

1. Take a picture of your warranty
2. Define the expiration date
3. Forget about it!

Easy.

Jody came up today with the WarranT idea. After a few minutes we ended up defining the MVP features.

The application must allow the user to take a picture of a warranty, add a name, description, location and an expiration date. The main screen of the application is the list of existing warranties and the possibility to add a new one. A notification will be sent at a predefined date/time.

WarranT will help you know when a warranty expires and, most importantly, remember where you placed the original copy.

The goal here is to define the golden path of a simple user.

Storing the data model in Firebase by Google. Easy, Free (at first), Fast.

A medium fidelity prototype is a prototype with limited functionality and clickable areas, which presents the interactions and navigation possibilities of an application. 

Such prototype can be done using Indesign or in this case Adobe XD. It is extremely important as it allows the team to align itself regarding the functionalities and interactions of the application. 

We are using GIT as project management and versioning system. The next logical step is to create tasks based on the newly created Wireframe. Note that for "Creative Friday" time-constraint reasons we are taking huge shortcuts, as the idea is to release an app in a day! This is rapid prototyping! 

And then we only have to dev' while having fun. There is currently a race between the iOS and Android team!

In only a few hours, we couldn't reach a point where we felt comfortable releasing the applications. However, we did manage to have the main features implemented on both Android and iOS. 

iOS vs Android - Please keep in mind we had only an afternoon. The exercise was part of the team building Creative Friday. 

If you feel like it, please give us a feedback on what was just explained about the application or the Creative Friday concept.

1. Setting up a project always takes more time than expected.
2. MVP (Minimum Viable Product) must really be an MVP - Typically we could have avoided creating all the account creation part using social media.
3. We have an amazing team that loves its job!
4. Rapid prototyping is definitely a great way to quickly solve tons of problems without wasting to much time/money.
5. Designing an app doesn't come in a day! That's why we usually work with design professionals.