Simplest and quickest way to portray an application for development

Question

As a designer I sometimes feel the need to portray the main idea of an application in a graphical form like a flowchart. Something that is easy enough to understand for the development firms and could convey the purpose of the application and possibly the main features it needs to provide which they could ultimately use to reply back with recommendations, rough estimates and turn around times.

The application will still be in the ideation phase so creating a prototype is an overkill. I could do it as a flowchart but I thought there should already be a conventional way professionals follow instead of going through meetings or typing up the details.

How do you go about doing this? If flowchart is the way to go then what type of flowcharts work best here? I just need the initial direction so I could start my research.

For example for an application with 3 different sets of dashboards for customers, providers and admins how can I demonstrate the rough logic that connects all functions between these 3 type of users?

Thank you.

Answer 1

This is a usual procedure that is followed when we plan over developing a new application:

• Start by creating User stories. Which define different scenarios that a user might face and explain why that feature is included in your application. This helps us further is second step
• Then a Use case diagram. Which usually defines the logic for these type of conditions - an application with 3 different sets of dashboards for customers, providers and admins
• Then you make UI/UX Mockups. These are basic level hand-drawn or digitally generated wireframes/blueprints of couple of important screens of your app. Just to give a better sense of how the flow will be when it is in your user's hand. It need not contain high end graphics or illustrations

These are just some basic considerations while planning for an application development. You can start by researching over them.

Here are some examples of these:

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Basic User Stories

Use Case Diagram

Basic App Mockup