A UI Prototyping Tool that Changes the Designer Client Relationship

The life of a designer is a constant process of revision and design. The cycle is repeated over and over; create design wireframes, interlink and demonstrate the prototype for a client, receive feedback and revise or restart from scratch. This process can take ages and is limited by the tools available to the designer. It's easy to see why a new ui prototyping tool could change the equation.

ui prototyping tool

There's a new tool just recently released that addresses this very problem. It's designed for designers from the ground up. It's geared specifically to help mobile application and web designers create exceptionally realistic prototypes of the finished product. These prototypes look and feel like the real thing, complete with clickable interfaces. This allows clients to do more than simulate action using wireframe mockups -- they can actually experience what the final product would be like. This new tool even includes messaging capability, so designers and clients can communicate in real time as they use the prototype. This new tool is InVision.

This means of communication reduces costs effectively. It eliminates text documents, e-mails and phone conversations that take the specificity out of feedback. With the project in front of both parties, communication can be clearer than it's ever been before.

With InVision’s ui prototyping tool, designers can create these prototypes without writing a single line of code. No longer do designers have to write tedious code just to create mockups of the final product -- code that is wasted in the long run. This saves time and allows companies to assign fewer people to the project.

Combining these two factors allows the tool to greatly improve the interaction between designers and clients. It reduces the number of iterations of the feedback cycle by allowing real time communication. Designers don't waste time in rewriting code for new prototypes. They just interact with the project currently open.

The best part is, InVision’s ui prototyping tool , interacts directly with the tools designers already use, like Adobe products and design studios. Designers are used to working in Photoshop, Fireworks or Illustrator -- common tools of the trade. With this new prototyping tool, these designers can continue using the same suite of software for the entire project. No learning new software just for prototypes. No tedious coding in an arbitrary programming language. Just a simple transition from program to program using the same data.

As a designer, there's no better tool available for ui prototyping. It's simple, it's effective, and it eliminates large amounts of time and stress from the design process. It's a benefit to all involved, and truly does change the client-designer relationship.

What Designers Expect from a Prototyping Tool

When a designer thinks about their ideal prototyping tool, what do they envision? The list of things they wish they could do is huge. Designers often wish for drag and drop functionality, to better enable the linking of screens and assembly of a prototype. 

Likewise, designers are always looking for ways to cut down on costs, for both project managers and business owners. One potential way to cut down costs is by eliminating the time involvement necessary for designer-client communication. Real time collaboration would slash project time. 

prototyping tool

Another item high on the list of wishes is a tool that eliminates the need for so much tedious documentation. Every step of the process needs to be documented, and that takes time and energy -- not to mention storage space. The fewer man-hours spent on documentation, and the fewer development cycles needing to be documented, the more money and time is saved by everyone involved.

Finally, a tool has hit the market that addresses each and every one of these problems. It's called InVision, and it lets a designer use their existing tools to create a working model prototype. Anyone involved in the project can interact with the prototype complete with working buttons, navigation, and test data. InVision also allows real time communication and direct interaction with the prototype, saving those design cycles.

InVision creates these full featured prototypes out of image files your designer already has. It works with existing tools like Photoshop or Fireworks, and eliminates the need to code a framework from scratch. Designers can upload directly from their existing projects without the need for conversion, coding or extra work.

The best part of InVision is that it allows full resolution high-fidelity prototyping. Gone are the days of a black and white half-sketched mockup. InVision's prototypes look exactly like the current revision of the project, as finalized as it is. The resulting creation is full featured and looks like a finished project, not a blueprint. It even allows remote access to the project with as much or as little security as is necessary. It can even make educated guesses about ideal background colors and alignments for presentation.

As of March 2012, nearly 21,000 designers have created over 132,000 screens using InVision, all within six months of launch. Try a free trial today, and see just how much this excellent tool can save for you.

A Prototype Tool that Shares Your Vision

Imagine a tool that allows you to create a life-like and fully functional mockup of your project. Imagine that the client can see and interact with it in full color and high fidelity. Imagine that it's free of all the clutter of the design process. Wouldn't such a tool be useful?

This prototype tool is now available. It's called InVision, and with it you can generate prototypes that work so well they might almost pass for the real thing. Not only that, but it works so well with the tools you already use that it may as well work on instinct.

prototype tool

InVision was conceived in a market saturated with barely-functional freeware, applications that require learning new skills, and single-purpose tools that clutter the design process and take up processing power. Making wireframe mockups of your projects is a trial at best, but InVision makes that simple.

To use this prototype tool, all you need to do is drag and drop your wireframes into a project. Link those wireframes together and you're presented with a functional and beautiful result. You can present this to your client and, through InVision, communicate directly with them. It eliminates lengthy documentation, e-mail exchanges and feedback cycles. You can communicate in real time with anyone you add to the project.

One of the benefits of this direct communication is that InVision allows the client to directly manipulate the project. Their changes are automatically documented and presented to the designer up to and including generating e-mails itself and setting automatic alerts. Right there, a vast amount of time and tedium is taken care of.

Using InVision’s prototype tool is easy. Simply create hotspot links or templates of frequently used links, apply them to a screen and specify a target, and you're good to go. If parts of the project are hidden or finished, you can even password protect the links. InVision really does have everything a designer could want in a prototyping tool.