Prototyping and UX Design Tools
I have been wanting to blog about some of my favorite prototyping and design tools for some time now. I started to sit down and type this, but first I read my feeds and came across this timely article by Nishant Kothary. It is a loosely related blog post about master designer Bill Buxton from the Mix 09 conference. It is a great read about both Bill's character and keynote address.
Now on to my post. In the past I have been a fan of using Access for prototyping...and why not? It has some RAD tools for database and form design. You can connect forms pretty quickly to demonstrate your application's flow. When it's all said and done, your forms and databae diagram are easily incorporated into your design docs.
The University of Washington's Denim tool has proven useful to me from time to time. I would enjoy it even more if I had a tablet. I encourage you to check it out as it will cost you nothing.
If you are a Visio person like I am, you will certainly appreciate the stencils and shapes created by Henrik Olson at GUUUI. While he is no longer keeping the product current, his site is very helpful. He includes articles about usability, prototyping, design best practices and tools. There is even a review of an iPhone app designer. There is a RSS feed, too, if you're a Crackberry like me. One recent link I followed from there took me to a comparison of Rapid Prototyping Tools by Dan Harrelson. He includes cutting edge products such as Expressions Blend and Flex, too. Read it! Also read the comments.
Finally, one of my students in my Systems Design class, Ka-Yue Yeung, introduced me to balsamiq. Ka-Yue used it to produce a great design doc for his project. I certainly have some exceptional students.
These are some of the tools that I use or have used in the past that I found to be useful. I hope you will find some of them useful also. If there are others that have helped you, don't keep it a secret....leave a comment.
