How To Make a Fake App

When you have an idea for a mobile application, you can either go all out and start building it immediately or start by making a fake app first before building a real one. This is known as prototyping your application.

There are numerous advantages of doing this. Building a fake app first allows you to play around with the ideas and concepts you have. This helps to get valuable insights about your idea, get feedback and give a better shape to your idea before you finally start building. Building a fake app first can also help you save costs on development since you can start working a product that has been better streamlined to the unique needs of your potential users from scratch.

The idea of prototyping is to create a model of your idea that may even be tested before you start investing time and money into the actual product you intend to build. This can be anything from a simple sketch to building an actual interface or interactive models of your products.

Fortunately, these days, making a fake version of your app has never been easier. There are a long list of software and apps that make it possible for developers and designers to create prototypes of their ideas before they start developing the real thing. Many of these packages are designed to be quite easy to use even for people with no actual programming skills. They make use of sketches, hand drawing, drag and drop builders and other simply prototyping tools to bring your idea to life in just a few clicks. These fake apps can mirror the real deal so much that you get a clear picture of what you are working with and can go into actual app development with a clear vision for your project.

Some of the popular tools that you can use for creating mobile app prototypes include:

1. Balsamiq: great tool for creating interactive wireframes and prototypes
2. Justinmind: advanced prototyping tool complete with extra features for simulation such as gesture control, swipe feature, tap & hold and so on.
3. Protos: no-code mobile prototyping tool that runs in your browser
4. Moqup: easy to use prototyping software for creating wireframes
5. UXpin: create mockups and clickable prototypes that work on multiple devices
6. Axure: one of the best corporate prototyping tools
7. Fluid: build prototypes for Android, iOS, and Windows platforms using easy-to-use pre-built tools
8. iPhone mockup: simple to use prototyping tool for iPhone with collaborative features for teams
9. Pidoco: a web-based tool for creating clickable prototypes
10. Pencil project: open source prototyping tool with loads of helpful features

With the right tools, creating a fake version of your project or idea is fairly simple. You can check out any of the tools above and there many others like them as well for creating wireframes and prototypes to test and improve your products or ideas before proceeding with their final iterations.