Monday, March 3, 2014

Hands On Prototyping

I love it when design becomes hands-on. Computer are great and all, but there's just something so satisfying about using your hands! (This is part of the reason why I'm so in love with whiteboards , but that's another rant for another day). So it makes sense that the paper prototyping aspect of UI design really appeals to me. It's a chance to get the mockups off the computer and into the hands of users.

I've found that when you paper prototype UI, you need to have good mockups. One of my favorite tools for this (back from when I was a wee lad designing UI for business student's apps last year) is NinjaMock. This has really everything you could ask for in an UI mockup app: it's simple to use, has all of the system pre-made UI elements, allows you to import your own images, and can export as a printable pdf. And most importantly, it's free (at least for three projects). Okay, that's enough of a plug for that.



So, I've printed out my mockups at fairly the right size (one of the downsides of the program is that when you go to print, it makes them nearly 8.5x11) and trimmed them properly (it's amazing how your trimming skills improve with time after you've cut out 36 screens of an app). I'm currently working on getting some users to handle the screens. I'll post some videos with results in a bit!

No comments:

Post a Comment