In manufacturing

Manufacturing

Manufacturing is the use of machines, tools and labor to produce goods for use or sale. The term may refer to a range of human activity, from handicraft to high tech, but is most commonly applied to industrial production, in which raw materials are transformed into finished goods on a large scale...

 and design

Design

Design as a noun informally refers to a plan or convention for the construction of an object or a system while “to design” refers to making this plan...

, a mockup, or mock-up, is a scale

Scale model

A scale model is a physical model, a representation or copy of an object that is larger or smaller than the actual size of the object, which seeks to maintain the relative proportions of the physical size of the original object. Very often the scale model is used as a guide to making the object in...

 or full-size model of a design or device, used for teaching, demonstration, design evaluation, promotion, and other purposes. A mockup is called a prototype

Prototype

A prototype is an early sample or model built to test a concept or process or to act as a thing to be replicated or learned from.The word prototype derives from the Greek πρωτότυπον , "primitive form", neutral of πρωτότυπος , "original, primitive", from πρῶτος , "first" and τύπος ,...

if it provides at least part of the functionality of a system and enables testing of a design.

Applications

Mockups are used virtually everywhere a new product is designed. A few specific examples are the following:

Automotive devices

Mockups are used in the automotive device industry as part of the product development process, where dimensions, overall impression, and shapes are tested in a wind tunnel

Wind tunnel

A wind tunnel is a research tool used in aerodynamic research to study the effects of air moving past solid objects.-Theory of operation:Wind tunnels were first proposed as a means of studying vehicles in free flight...

 experiment. They can also be used to test consumer reaction.

Systems engineering

Mockups, wireframes

Website wireframe

A website wireframe, also known as a page schematic or screen blueprint, is a visual guide that represents the skeletal framework of a website. The wireframe depicts the page layout or arrangement of the website’s content, including interface elements and navigational systems, and how they work...

 and prototypes are not so cleanly distinguished in software

Software engineering

Software Engineering is the application of a systematic, disciplined, quantifiable approach to the development, operation, and maintenance of software, and the study of these approaches; that is, the application of engineering to software...

 and systems engineering

Systems engineering

Systems engineering is an interdisciplinary field of engineering that focuses on how complex engineering projects should be designed and managed over the life cycle of the project. Issues such as logistics, the coordination of different teams, and automatic control of machinery become more...

, where mockups are a way of designing user interface

User interface

The user interface, in the industrial design field of human–machine interaction, is the space where interaction between humans and machines occurs. The goal of interaction between a human and a machine at the user interface is effective operation and control of the machine, and feedback from the...

s on paper or in computer images. A software mockup will thus look like the real thing, but will not do useful work beyond what the user sees. A software prototype, on the other hand, will look and work just like the real thing. In many cases it is best to design or prototype the user interface before source code

Source code

In computer science, source code is text written using the format and syntax of the programming language that it is being written in. Such a language is specially designed to facilitate the work of computer programmers, who specify the actions to be performed by a computer mostly by writing source...

 is written or hardware

Hardware

Hardware is a general term for equipment such as keys, locks, hinges, latches, handles, wire, chains, plumbing supplies, tools, utensils, cutlery and machine parts. Household hardware is typically sold in hardware stores....

 is built, to avoid having to go back and make expensive changes.

Early layouts of a World Wide Web site or pages are often called mockups. A large selection of proprietary

Proprietary software

Proprietary software is computer software licensed under exclusive legal right of the copyright holder. The licensee is given the right to use the software under certain conditions, while restricted from other uses, such as modification, further distribution, or reverse engineering.Complementary...

 or open-source

Open-source software

Open-source software is computer software that is available in source code form: the source code and certain other rights normally reserved for copyright holders are provided under a software license that permits users to study, change, improve and at times also to distribute the software.Open...

 software tools are available for this purpose.

Military acquisition

Mockups are an integral part of the military acquisition

Military acquisition

Military acquisition is the bureaucratic management and procurement process dealing with a nation's investments in the technologies, programs, and product support necessary to achieve its national security strategy and support its armed forces...

 process. Mockups are often used to test human factors

Human factors

Human factors science or human factors technologies is a multidisciplinary field incorporating contributions from psychology, engineering, industrial design, statistics, operations research and anthropometry...

 and aerodynamics

Aerodynamics

Aerodynamics is a branch of dynamics concerned with studying the motion of air, particularly when it interacts with a moving object. Aerodynamics is a subfield of fluid dynamics and gas dynamics, with much theory shared between them. Aerodynamics is often used synonymously with gas dynamics, with...

, for example. In this context, mockups include wire-frame models. They can also be used for public display and demonstration purposes prior to the development of a prototype, as with the case of the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II mock-up aircraft.

Consumer goods

Mockups are used in the consumer goods industry as part of the product development process, where dimensions, human factors, overall impression, and commercial art

Commercial art

Commercial art is historically a subsector of creative services, referring to art created for commercial purposes, primarily advertising. The term has become increasingly anachronistic in favor of more contemporary terms such as graphic design and advertising art.Commercial art traditionally...

 are tested in marketing research

Marketing research

Marketing research is "the function that links the consumer, customer, and public to the marketer through information — information used to identify and define marketing opportunities and problems; generate, refine, and evaluate marketing actions; monitor marketing performance; and improve...

.

Furniture and cabinetry

Mockups are commonly required by designers, architects, and end users for custom furniture and cabinetry. The intention is often to produce a full-sized replica, using inexpensive materials in order to verify a design. Mockups are often used to determine the proportions of the piece, relating to various dimensions of the piece itself, or to fit the piece into a specific space or room. The ability to see how the design of the piece relates to the rest of the space is also an important factor in determining size and design.

When designing a functional piece of furniture, such as a desk or table, mockups can be used to test whether they suit typical human shapes and sizes. Designs that fail to consider these issues may not be practical to use. Mockups can also be used to test color, finish, and design details which cannot be visualized from the initial drawings and sketches. Mockups used for this purpose can be on a reduced scale.

The cost of making mockups is often more than repaid by the savings made by avoiding going into production with a design which needs improvement.

Software Engineering

The most common use of Mockups in software development is to create user interfaces that shows the end user what the software will look like without having to build the software or the underlying functionality. Software UI mockups can range from very simple hand drawn screen layouts, through realistic bitmaps, to semi functional user interfaces developed in a software development tool.

Mockups are often used to create Unit tests - there they are usually called Mock objects

Mock object

In object-oriented programming, mock objects are simulated objects that mimic the behavior of real objects in controlled ways. A programmer typically creates a mock object to test the behavior of some other object, in much the same way that a car designer uses a crash test dummy to simulate the...

. The main reasons to create such mockups is to be able to test one part of a software system (a unit) without having to use dependent modules. The function of these dependencies is then "faked" using mock objects.

This is especially important if the functions that are simulated like this are difficult to obtain (for example because it involves complex computation) or if the result is non-deterministic, such as the readout of a sensor.

Mockup Software can also be used for micro level evaluation, for example to check a single function, and derive results from the tests to enhance the products power and usability on the whole.

See also

• Digital mockup
  Digital mockup
  Digital MockUp or DMU is a concept that allows the description of a product, usually in 3D, for its entire life cycle. Digital Mockup is enriched by all the activities that contribute to describing the product. The product design engineers, the manufacturing engineers, and the support engineers...
  
  
• Human-in-the-Loop
  Human-in-the-Loop
  Human-in-the-Loop is defined as a model that requires human interaction. HITL is associated with Virtual Modeling & Simulation in the Live, Virtual, and Constructive taxonomy. HITL models may conform to Human factors requirements as is the case of a Mockup...
  
  
• Military dummy
• Operations research
  Operations research
  Operations research is an interdisciplinary mathematical science that focuses on the effective use of technology by organizations...
  
  
• Pilot experiment