Rapid prototyping with Balsamiq
Ben Logan - Published: 09th Nov 2009 17.36 GMT
Every now and again a tool comes along that we really love to use and Balsamiq is one of them.
What is Balsamiq?
Balsamiq is a tool for rapid software prototypes with a whole host of pre-built controls to quickly visually communicate interfaces to various project teams.
Digital sketching
The whole purpose of prototyping is to quickly identify ideas on paper and to explore how they could work without committing hours of design and development time for something that was never going to work.
Balsamiq speeds this process up as it actually contains loads of inbuilt widgets, layouts and visual devices all of which can be dragged and slid into place on the main stage and annotated very quickly.
Screenshot 1
Benefits
- Relatively low cost to run $79.00 per license
- 75 pre-built controls and layouts including browser window, media-player and an iPhone picker
- Looks hand drawn so easy to "throw away" prototypes
- Extendible - controls can be imported as images
- Potential usability problems can be highlighted early on with minimal time spent on design and development
- Works in conjunction with tools such as JIRA
What do you need for rapid prototyping with Balsamiq?
- Workstation with Balsamiq installed, or use the online version
- Room where you can stick things up on the wall and discuss
- Printer and lots of Blue tack
Visit the Balsamiq website to try the product for yourself.
Need some more information?
If you would like to learn more about how we can help you with User centred design then please call us or email us below and we would be happy to help out where we can.
We are ready to answer your questions right now, so please contact us by telephone on +44 (0) 207 168 7526 or drop us a quick email info@spotlessinteractive.com and we will do our best to help you with any questions you might have.
