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What Tools Do You Use for UI Prototyping?
AccUser asks: "There are many articles discussing methods of UI prototyping. Having been involved in the design and implementation of a number of commercial applications (both desktop and embedded), I know the value of producing early prototypes of the UI. In the past I have used visual programming tools, such as Visual Basic, but there is always that request: 'Can't you just complete the prototype and release it?' One project I was involved with, the UI prototype employed hand drawn graphics (including hand written text labels, etc) in order to be explicit about the fact that it was a prototype. What I would like to know is what tools and techniques do you use for UI prototyping, and how do you manage your client's expectations?"
If you are OSS, or want to buy a Qt license, Qt designer is very good for prototyping -- you can even make it functionally quickly with some pyqt, then write it in whatever language you want later.
DYWYPI?
You should try using wxPython. Python is terrific for fast prototyping. Hell, I'm still using the prototypes I've developed.
I like to use pen and paper, personally. Pen and paper is good for anything, it seems.
Show this to your friends and family that don't know what a real hacker is
Whiteboard planning out the dev side, Visio for anything we hand the customer. That way they don't get any illusions there might be some prototype they can slam into production - even if I've got the HTML looking right on my part.
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
I use Dia all the time for interface. It's great for trying out different variations. Since the graphic primitives are so, well, primitive, it's easy to focus on usability instead of eye candy. Visio might also be usable for this.
Accept Eris as your Fnord and personally sate her
"how do you manage your client's expectations?"
A good solid "NO!" with lots of eye contact.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
They call that RAD.
A laptop running either RealBasic, O'Basic or Visual Basic, hooked to a large TV. One person on the laptop, but the whole team working on the idea. Notebook and markers, laser pointer, pizza, and (if your team is disciplined enough) beer. The UI builds itself.
Make unfinished items on your prototype have a funny font or a strange color. When the client asks you to fix it, say that it looks bad because it isn't finished. Generally, people who aren't programmers have no idea that writing an application is any harder than changing the font on a button, or that changing the font on a button is trivial. If your mockup uses Comic Sans with random alignment, they can evaluate it while realizing that it is not actually near completion.
Flash. No seriously, give it a shot
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No, seriously.
n teractive_designer/default.aspx
http://www.microsoft.com/products/expression/en/i
Prototype in XAML and then hook the prototype UI directly into your back-end code.
Of course, judgment is suspended until it actually ships, but the demos at PDC were very promising.
Glade + Pygtk + Python
I mean, lots of people need multi step procedures and seek approval inbetween each step, so developing UI goes from paper to prototype to working model finally to release.
This is mostly why many software/web products take months or years to develop.
Best way to prototype? Dive right in and code up working UI.
After developing UI for software for the last 10 years, I can safetly say that I can work up a working "prototype" just as quickly as I can do the release version. I have written my own Windows based GUI controls which make it easier and quicker to implement then your basic Win32 or MFC ones. This way, I can actually start working on the release software while getting feedback from people directly using the UI.
Whether its software or web design, UI really needs to be experienced and interacted with in order to determine is efficiency or practicality. Drawing up static images of a website or application is all nice, but its a waste of time. What do you do while waiting for management to approve your pretty pictures. Sure things might look all nice, but when they finally get the release product, they may not understand why some control doesn't do what the picture suggested it would do.
It takes me anywhere from a few hours to a few days to get a functional UI up and running and while management is playing around with it and deciding what they like and don't like, I am continuing to develop the UI further, all in an effort to get to the release product quickly. In this way, by the time management decides what it is they finally want, its already done.
In any regard, I find it best to work up prototypes in the development environment you would use to create the final product, that is, just start working on the final product right from the start. Using any kind of thrid party tools or procedures is just a good way to waste time and money.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
I draw out a UI before writing a line of code. Depending on the problem at hand, I then draw (again by hand), implementation details like class hierarchies, interfaces, callbacks, etc.
e -1.01/lib/File/CreationTime.pm
;)
When you're sitting in front of a computer, it's too easy to just start writing code. When you lose your train of thought, though, you'll end up throwing it all away because you won't know how it works. If you go to your local coffee shop with a notebook and a pencil, and start prototyping, you'll have a good plan on paper. It will be much easier to implement from a fixed plan that's written down than from some idea that you have. It will also be easier to come in the next day and start where you left off, rather than going off on some other tangent because you forgot your idea that seemed good yesterday.
My usual successful development strategy is this:
1) plan UI, interactions, structure, etc. on paper.
2) design reusable modules to do the grunt work.
3) write the documentation and unit tests for said modules. This is where you get the chance to play test your modules before you've committed to an interface. The SYNOPSIS section of your documentation (where you show example use of your module), is a great place to experiment with how your code is going to work and interact with other pieces of code. Once you know what the interface is going to look like, document the methods. Then write unit tests for them. If your interface is no good, you'll know by now, and you won't have wasted any time writing code that you're just going to trash.
4) go home and relax. you don't have to think about your code anymore because "perldoc My::Module" is going to tell you everything you need to know when you come in tomorrow morning.
5) write the actual code
6) move on to the next piece, knowing you have a well-designed, documented, tested module to build on!
I'll throw in a link to a module I developed like this. It's not particularly good in the sense of using amazing algorithms or being incredibly useful, but the documentation and tests are decent.
http://search.cpan.org/~jrockway/File-CreationTim
Note that every interaction the module has with the outside world has at least a little blurb to refresh my memory about what happens. That's the important part. (It's an added bonus if some random person on the Internet can understand how your code works too
My other car is first.
use chalk on cave walls, you insensitive clod!
When it gets approved, you just add the code on the back and you're all set.
Plus you could let your manager or client play with it. Put all the buttons and fields on there and set things up, then let him drag 'em around, change font sizes, etc. Sure it will probably be hideous, but he'll be happy :). They even did something like this for Steve Jobs when making the original Mac (story here at Folklore.org.)
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
and that's that.
I think this is actually an excellent idea. It makes a lot of sense for elements that aren't finished to be immediately recognizable as such by the end user.
"It is our blasphemy which has made us great, and will sustain us, and which the gods secretly admire in us." - Zelazny
Photoshop + Whiteboard + Paper + Pen + Thinking
That's my usual combo. Sometimes I'll throw together some PHP if I want to test out some usability stuff.
The company I work for has done very well doing very basic prototypes in web pages with PHP with a MySQL backend. That really gives the customer a chance to review the basic system quickly. Then we convert the interface to a GUI one using the GTK libraries from PHP. For a few of the more important projects we've then converted the PHP to C.
This gives our company the opportunity to have MBA's with a little HTML and PHP programming training talk to the customers initially. Then guys that are a little better at PHP and know GTK convert the initial prototype to a much more fleshed-out prototype. Then I personally either polish-up the PHP or convert it to C depending on the requirements.
By having MBA's work with the customer on the requirements and giving the customer the ability to quickly (within a week on a small project) see where the project is starting, we've been able to give customers much better estimates of how long something will take and how much it will cost. Also, it's really cut-down on the amount of code we've had to rewrite. Before we started doing it this way 18 months ago, it was just me programming for the previous 22 years. I'd hired about two dozen programmers, and all were completely useless for anything nontrivial. It's much easier to find a programmer that can write PHP well enough to prototype. Now I can get more than five to ten times as many projects done because the requirements are so much better and almost set in stone before I have to start working.
It's neat to see non-programmers (MBA's) work with people that claim to program but are pitiful at it (the average Comp Sci graduate) then a good programmer (me) all work together to take a project smoothly and quickly from a discussion in a meeting with a customer to a working system that does exactly what the customer wants.
...and with PyObjC, you can easily plug some "brains" to the interface in good old Python. Really neat !
Then I switched to Visio and was able to crank out diagrams of a robust website quickly, and still include all the subtitles and annotations that you want. I could template pages easily enough, which would help when quickly rebranding the prototype for other clients in under 30 minutes (pretty common practice when you work for an App service provider).
When a proto was ready for client review I'd send the Visio printout to CutePDF, using the filename for dating and versioning. Our clients loved PDF prototyping since it was easier to printout the whole "website" and make their own notes, something they wouldn't do as easily with a website, prototyped in HTML or as a working demo.
I chose Visio as it was easily available in our office, no doubt there's an OO.org equivalent that would do just as well.
Height: 38U, Weight: 0 Newtons, Eyes: #0000FF, OS: Gray Matter 1.0 (Alpha)
This is an an excellent reason to develop with the Model-View-Controller paradigm. You can develop the UI to be as complete as you want. It becomes reasonable to turn the prototype into the final product. However, that doesn't mean you can release it right away since the interface is only the view. You still have to develop the other two parts of the architecture. It is good for the customer because you can say yes to their request. It is also good for you since this separation has kept you from accidentally polluting the the rest of the code with the UI prototype/non-prototype. Also you can use separate languages for each part of the MVC architecture. Use a language that suits itself to the UI and then change to something else that better fits the controller and likewise the model.
There is a freeware or shareware that is java based I believe, I found it about a year ago, I've tried it and now I can't find it anymore. It allows you to hand-draw boxes and ui elements and connect them to each other to make a working UI prototype. Anyone knows what I'm talking about?
I'll do the stupid thing first and then you shy people follow...
Maybe you got a funny for "giving it a shot" at Flash? Seriously Flash with Actionscript is one of the tools I use. I also write in LISP and Smalltalk (amoung others) so GUI development is easy.*
*I don't recommend the MVC pattern.
http://dub.washington.edu/projects/denim/
Libglade is the greatest thing ever.
Surprised no one has mentioned DENIM, it's a free (as in juice) UI design tool that basically combines the advantages of a traditional whiteboard (it uses a drawing tablet for the primary interface) and something like the VB6 IDE. Check it out at http://dub.washington.edu/denim/
I've used PowerPoint (and Impress) to do UI mock-ups,.. The nice thing is that it's clearly not actual web/software widgets that are being used, so nobody really expects the final version to look exactly like the powerpoint version. Also, it is easy for anyone to change or update the document. I turn off the snap to grid feature which greatly improves the usability of PowerPoint, and build any standard widgets by grouping boxes and text as needed.
I'm still optimistic that a better tool may exist, but I've had good results with this approach when discussing UI design issues.
Amazing magic tricks
..is to use paper. Use a piece of paper and pencil or pieces of construction paper that are then labeled by hand, arranged on a surface, and then affixed with tape when it's done. It's a very hands-on way to do it and users are immediately comfortable with it and not intimidated. Or just use a dry erase whiteboard. That works pretty well too.
When your users can comfortably pretend to use the application by talking through the drawings/cutouts, THEN you put it into your functional specification document in a couple different ways:
1. take a picture and paste the pic
OR
2. "transcribe" the prototype into MS Access or the VB form designer or whatever (with NO functionality) and paste a screen shot of that into the document
And that's it. Try it. Your users will thank you.
Please mod this post only if you think others should/n't read this. I have enough ego^H^H^Hkarma. Thanks!
Pen and paper sketches, then some quick Photoshop mockups which eventually morph into a look which gets hacked up for a DHTML prototype.
"MVC is OK for implimenting little things such as buttons, but it fails miserably as an application-level architecture because MVC requires the controller to know way too much about how the model-level objects are implimented. Too much data is flowing around in the system for the system to be maintainable."*
*"Holub on Patterns: page 15"
I've just done a prototype in C++ for the Tor GUI context http://tor.eff.org/gui/index.html. If you don't believe me just see http://wyoguide.sourceforge.net/index.php?page=tor mgr.html.
See http://wyoguide.sf.net/papers/Cross-platform.html
Sorry, just to give this post more visibility, because Denim is actually very great.
thats it
.
. hmmm
Gorm is the IDE environment for NextStep. sorry..... I meant GNUStep ;-)
http://www.gnustep.org/experience/Gorm.html
Its still ugly as sin, but its the closest thing OS X has "native" that could also be considered multi-platform.
Someone else made a deliberately lo-fi, rough draft theme based on paper & pencil. For the background, picture white paper with blue horizontal lines. Instead of straight lines, picture a freehand line drawn in pencil. A messy, obviously handwritten font would also help.
I can't remember where I saw this; I haven't used it, but I thought I'd bookmarked it.
Actually the movie industry (*cough*cough*spit*spit*) came up with a solution. Storyboarding. Forget all the implimentation details, and storyboard your interface from start to finish.*
*Of course this is called a paper UI. Really the issue is "amount of detail"
UI Tools prototype you!
... such as a Car, a Shoe, a Candy Bar or an iPod.
Then respectfully ask "Can't you just complete this prototype and release it?"
Some will get it. Some won't.
--- Attorneys Assisting Citizen-Soldiers & Families -
The very first prototype of a UI should be on paper. You draw the interface, menus, dialog boxes, etc. You can even user test a paper interface, ideally with one person "playing computer" (i.e., bringing up dialog boxes when the user "clicks" on the buttons), one person providing directions to the participant, and one person making notes.
Some types of interfaces require more finesse than others when using paper, but even if the interface includes animated elements, you can still learn a lot from the paper version. And it's *so* much faster to build with paper than even with the easiest software prototyping/RAD/whatever tool.
In the past, I have used Microsoft Excel to do UI prototyping. It has some features which can be used to convey the design:-
- Cell Comments: To mention any special logic etc on a particular field on the screen.
- Can show drop downs, buttons.
- Use multiple sheets and make the hyperlink work to navigate between sheets.
- Can use colors to mark changes to some sections to existing UIs.
If you haven't looked into XUL it's well worth the effort. With XUL (i.e. the Mozilla App Platform) there's a real possibility you could respond "Ok" to a request to implement the prototype.
Or you could do what a consulting firm did to, er, for my employer. Buy some Macs, and spend a lot of time using Photoshop etc. to create bitmap images that look like a GUI. Then spend a lot of time making PDF files from the images, showing a UI that looks nothing like a computer GUI, but that in the end will bear some resemblance to the finished product. Be sure to charge a lot of money and call your people "designers", so your client will think he's getting real value for the money. Call the PDF files by some term that sounds like a term of art - they called them "wireframes" on my project - to enhance the illusion that mere mortals could not possibly do the work. Then hire some grunts to look at the PDF files and try to make a GUI that looks like them, sort of. Be sure to make expensive, customized button images, even for stuff like "Yes", "No", etc. Also, make sure you call yourself a "User Experience Specialist" or something like that. No, "User Experience Architect" is better - always try to get "Architect" in your titles, and charge extra for it.
And it's not a "prototype", its a "User Experience architecture preview".
Total agreement here. Our marketing department started doing UI prototypes in Ruby-on-Rails which let them easily flush out deeper "prototypes" as the user-testing suggested more research was necessary.
Interestingly, now that UI prototype is quickly approaching full-functionality even faster than the "real" C#/.NET project that engineering's working on - and interesting things may happen to the whole engineering group with the company now considering turning the marketing department's prototype into a replacement for the "real" product.
If you need to make high level node-arc diagrams of the structure of a site, take a look at GraphViz (http://www.graphviz.org/) It's very powerful, with a very simple text syntax, and saves you the trouble of manually routing the arcs. You might also want to take a look at Asymptote (http://asymptote.sourceforge.net/)
I tend to use my piss on snowy days.
Enough said!
"Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives" should be a convenience store, not a government agency.
Anyone use vector graphics programs to do this?
I use Canvas to do almost all of my design and low-mid level prototyping work once I'm past the pencil and paper stage. Canvas is sort of a jack of all trades graphics program that is a cross between Illustrator, Photoshop, and light version of InDesign. Not as capable than any of them individually, but tightly and smoothly integrated. Imports and exports a very wide variety of file formats.
For semi-interactive prototypes, I can output my work in a PDF which can have links so people can click on buttons and be taken to different pages in the PDF (which simulates changes in the UI).