Prototyping an application screens in the initial stages of the software development, is helpful in two ways. Firstly, the prototype is an easy way to gather client requirements. The client would feel comfortable expressing what he wants, if he could see a prototype of the application. Also, once the prototype is agreed by the client, then it becomes like an agreement, that the developer agreed to deliver and the client agreed to accept. Secondly, the prototype helps the developer himself to get a better understanding of the application. Thus, the sooner we come up with a prototype of our applications, the better.
Recently I got to evaluate one prototyping application – Mockup Screens. It’s a simple tool for quickly building the screen mockups. I said ’simple’ because only the needed features are there in the Mockup Screens. And I said ‘quickly’ because the tool is real easy to use. I’ve used some other prototyping tools also, but I could see some distinctive features in the Mockup Screens. To list a few:
The Pros:
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It’s possible to create mockup screens and group them based on the scenarios.
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Able to add comments on the user interface elements (similar to how you add review comments in a word document). Really useful feature for a getting feedbacks from our clients and peers.
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The mockup screens can be shown in a slide show. If you are giving a presentation to your client, this feature will help you a lot.
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Supports three modes of prototyping – Web, Windows and black&White. There are not much differences between the Web and Windows mode, only the Form background color changes from white from grey, if you choose Windows mode.
Apart from these features, the usual options like exporting to HTML, XML, PDF and taking screen shots are also supported. And it’s possible to assign a click event to any UI element on the mock screen, so that when clicking on that element, a different screen can be reached.
The Cons:
And, there are some suggestions also from my side to the Mockup Screens development team:
- After selecting a particular UI elements from the Widgets panel, the cursor changes to cross-hair, but there is no change on that UI element in the Widgets panel. I feel it will be good to show that UI element as selected [Usability].
- After selecting a UI element to draw, there is no way to cancel it, incase you do not want to draw that UI element, The only way is to draw that UI element first and then delete it! [Usability].
- As a web developer, I may need more features on the Web mode.
So, that’s it about the Mockup Screens. It can be downloaded from here, incase you wanna try it out the tool. If you have used the tool before, please comment your opinions.
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