Prototyping Tools Roundup

October 12, 2017 6:10 PM

Decent roundup of tools to help designers create interactive prototypes and wireframes. The prototyping and interactive design space has been changing rapidly. Sitepoint has provided thumbnail sketches of 15 of the top ones, as well as videos showing them in action.
posted by jenkinsEar (8 comments total)

I have no web design or graphic design experience at all but nevertheless frequently get asked to "mock up" pages for random reasons, so have been using Justinmind mainly because it's free. But this is a handy little list to explore, thanks!
posted by turbid dahlia at 6:57 PM on October 12, 2017

Thanks for this jenkinsEar - my ever-expanding scribbled growth on my office wall whiteboard which I hope will become a phosphate-focused stormwater tool has lots of screens. Someone said I should "wireframe it" and they would code it so this'll get me a bit further. But Justinmind looks simple enough for me so thanks too turbid dahlia.
posted by unearthed at 1:59 AM on October 13, 2017

One thing I didn't find in any of the descriptions: Do any of these tools help you create apps and websites that meet accessibility standards?
posted by clawsoon at 3:19 AM on October 13, 2017 [1 favorite]

Software to make wireframes and prototypes has no real impact on the accessibility of the final product, because that needs to be crafted by the final mix of layout + HTML/CSS/Aria tagging.

They can, however, help everyone be able to more accurately see how a page will appear, and allow the whole team to think about ways the presentation can be improved to aid accessibility.
posted by gsh at 5:46 AM on October 13, 2017 [3 favorites]

Just a note that the first of the two authors, Dave Kearney, is the founder of Fluid UI, a nobody player in this space that is nonetheless listed first of nine in the "more tools worth considering" section. Being an industry insider myself, I do think that the article is a pretty good roundup of prevailing opinion at the moment. But I don't personally think that popular opinion at the moment—or this article—is very well-informed. (I am definitely biased.)
posted by The Minotaur at 10:20 AM on October 13, 2017 [1 favorite]

I've bounced between Omnigraffle, Sketch, Adobe XD and now Axure RP (it's the company tool where I work now). All of them can broadly do the same stuff, but some are way better at things than others. Sketch with Craft is a great combination for doing quick layouts and dynamic indexes and things like that, but making mockups heavily interactive is a pain in the arse.

Whereas Axure can be kind of clunky and has some baffling omissions, but can also do some pretty advanced animation and interaction design from fairly simple ingredients. I do miss working in Sketch though, just because of how quick it is once you've learned a few shortcuts.
posted by Happy Dave at 10:26 AM on October 13, 2017

Do these things that purport to create working apps from prototypes really work?

Is there hypercard for smartphones?
posted by snuffleupagus at 10:35 AM on October 13, 2017 [1 favorite]

I really dig the Zeplin plugin for Sketch, it's super-great for grabbing all the data I care about from a comp.
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 3:00 PM on October 13, 2017