Prototyping/wireframing tools are the best communication method between interaction designers, project manager, and website developers. It’s a key step of web or mobile app development process. While in principle, the design of prototypes must be a product of interaction designers, and the user-centered concept shall run through the whole product design progress. The professional perspective and rich user experience of interaction designer will directly influence the usability of the product.
Desktop-based Prototyping Tools
This prototyping app is designed for speed and simplicity, lacking the breadth of other prototyping tools, but making up for it with easy usability. The goal of Mockplus is to offer intuitive design aids so that designers can focus more on creating their projects than how to use their tools. I work on both PC and Mac, so all the tools on this list are multi platform, or have a great alternative. It also supports some complex animations in it’s prototyping tools, which is nice. Really importantly, it’s got flawless importing from other Adobe products (And pretty good Sketch imports, too). ForeUI Prototyping Tool for Mac free download, dowload ForeUI Prototyping Tool, ForeUI is a prototyping tool,which can create mockup/wireframe/prototype for you.
1. Axure RP (Mac & Win) | ($495/user)
Axure RP is a desktop application that allows designers to create, test, and share interactive prototypes. Been called as the most comprehensive (in terms of functionality) prototyping tools, it’s an ideal desktop software for both static, low-fidelity prototypes and more sophisticated, interactive prototypes. As an extremely professional UX tool, Axure requires a steep learning curve.
2. Mockplus (Mac & Win) | ($129/year)
Mockplus is an all-inclusive rapid prototyping tool supports for the mainstream platforms of PC, website, and mobile device. The packaged interactions components and creative preview method allow designers to design and preview within minutes. It is a solid prototyping app for professional UI/UX designers who want to produce high-quality prototypes but without too much longer learning curve. More powerful features including:
UI Flow Design Mode— Instant switch between Prototype and UI Flow design modes; Display the UI flow of all or some certain pages; Intelligent connections between pages which can be adjust manually; Display important markups of pages; Export UI Flow at once.
Repeater— Convert any component easily into a Repeater. Drag the border of a Repeater to create repeated elements. Your adjustments made on one component will be applied to all.
Demo Projects and Templates — Demo Projects: Well-structured demos for you to make reference. Templates: Various built-in templates help you to build your prototypes on them, easy and fast.
Sketch Import — Publish selected Sketch Artboards as a Team Project in Mockplus. Insert Sketch Artboards into a Mockplus Team Project.
Table Component— Like using the Excel, you can make any change to this new table component in a visual way. Not only can you insert, edit or delete a cell easily, but also set the styles and the text formats of one or multiple cells freely.
3. Justinmind (Mac & WIn) | ($228/year)
Justinmind is a flexible prototyping tool for web and mobile app prototypes and high-fidelity website wireframes. The rich gestures in Justinmind allow designers to better build gesture interaction mobile apps. Justinmind also requires a deep learning curve, such as value expression.
4. Balsamiq (Win) | ($89/user)
Balsamiq Mockups is a rapid wireframing tool that helps you work faster & smarter. It reproduces the experience of sketching on a whiteboard, but using a computer. By comparison, Balsamiq is more focus on static and low-fidelity prototypes.
5. OmniGraffle (Mac) |($199.99)
OmniGraffle is a powerful design tool, it has extensive options for objects, canvases, templates, inspectors, and stencils to help designers set out to do something well, quickly. It has won the Apple Design Award in 2002.
Some other mockup tools:
Origami — A free tool for designing modern user interfaces (Mac) |
Adobe Experience Design — The first all-in-one tool for UX designers (Mac)
Prott — A new mobile app prototyping tool built for design teams (Mac) | ($421/year)
Principle — An animated design tool for interactive prototypes (Mac) | ($129/year)
So, the problem of how to complete a good prototype design that’s depending on how you choose prototyping/wireframing tools. Below are the most popular mockup & prototyping/wireframing tools& appsbased on the website, desktop, and mobile device.
Web-based Prototyping Tools
1.InVision | ($25/month)
As a web-based collaborative program, InVision is powerful at clickable & interactive prototypes, real-time design collaboration & share. InVison is an ideal choice for high fidelity design which is always impressive. The nice features such as Invision + Sketch, Invision + Adobe could be a great helpful for designers who pursue the high-end product.
2. UXpin | ($44.08 per user/year, starting from 4 users)
UXpin puts everything for designers in a UX design platform, also, it supports to upload file seamlessly on Sketch and Photoshop. Responsive prototypes and wireframes created by UXpin can run on different devices and resolutions. In addition, this software also provides version control and iterative function, you can easily share and preview prototypes by the intuitive and real-time collaboration.
3. Marvel | ($168 per user/year)
Marvel is also a web-based prototyping tool with good real-time collaboration. You can simply import mockup images from Sketch or Photoshop to link into clickable interactive prototypes for different devices. Just simple drag and link, you can bring your idea to life without any code experience.
4. FluidUI | ($99/year)
With built-in iOS, Material Design and Wireframe libraries containing over 2000 customizable widgets and icons, you can design and share a wireframe, mockup or prototype for any device or platform in minutes. FluidUI also features real-time collaboration for teams, video hangouts for user testing, on-device testing and interactive previews with chat/comments to share and iterate your designs with your team.
5. Proto.io
Proto.io is a very strong web app with many functions. Under the web-based environment, it supports rich gestures and touch style, such as slide, touch, zoom, press and other mainstream actions. With it, developers can create interactive prototypes for the iOS, Android and other mobile internet devices, and get feedback from users.
Some other web-based prototyping tools:
Pidoco — Online wireframe and UX prototyping tool | ($660/year for premium)
Mockingbird — Wireframes on the fly | ($40/month for 25 projects)
Mockflow — Great design tools and collaboration services for designers | ($148/year)
Moqups — Mockup, wireframe & UI prototyping tool for creating hi-fi wireframes | ($228/year for Pro)
Gliffy — Mock up web pages quickly & easily with wireframes | ($480/year for 10 projects)
Wireframe.cc — Minimal wireframing tool | ($390/year)
Framer — Design tool for code needed | ($159/year)
Mobile-based Prototyping Tools
1. POP（Prototyping on Paper) (iOS & Android) | ($168/year)
Joined Marvel in the end of 2016.
2. Tapcase (iOS) |
TapCase lets designers create app prototypes from hand-drawn sketches and screen mockups. It’s quite fast and easy to create interactive elements by adding hotspots, linking target screens, and picking transition animations.
3. Marvelapp (iOS & Android) | ($168/year)
Marvelapp is a free prototyping app for mobile app, the whole design progress completed on mobile devices. Like POP and Tapcase, easily upload the prepared sketches or screen mockups, and add inbuilt transitions & gestures to make the pen & paper ideas to live.
Some other mobile-based prototyping tools:
Mockplus app — Easily & quickly preview prototypes on mobile devices by scanning QR code or input the view code. (iOS & Android)
JustinMindPrototyper — The prototype viewer for Justinmind prototypes (iOS & Android)
Mockup Builder — Super-easy prototyping and mockups (iOS & Android)
Live Wires — To quick wireframe & prototype for iPhone and iPad app (iOS)
Appcooker — Prototyping studio for iPhone & iPad (iOS)
Any of your favorable mockup & prototyping tool you think should be included in this list? Please feel free to contact me. Hope this article be useful to you great UI/UX designers!
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This article was written in 2009 and remains one of our most popular posts. If you’re keen to learn more about wireframing, you may find this recent article on free online wireframing tools of great interest.
In recent years the number of tools available to help you document and design your web site has just exploded. It seems that we all need a wireframing or prototyping tool at our fingertips (at least in the design arena). So in order to save you the hard work required to find one, I’ve assembled this list. It can be expanded upon, so if you use an unlisted application, please let me know and I’ll add it to the list.
The tools tend to fall into two categories:
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- purpose-built applications
- multifunctional applications
Within these two groups I’ve found that usefulness can vary markedly among tools; some are only suitable for diagramming and wireframing, while others focus only on prototyping. The best are blessed with both capabilities and more.
Purpose-built Applications
1. Visio
I will state upfront that I’m not a big fan of Visio (price: from $US259, demo available); I’ve used it from time to time on various projects, but I’ve always found it fiddly and time-consuming.
Visio first started as an add-on to MS Word, filling the need for a business and technical diagramming tool and eventually graduating to separate product status. Visio’s power remains in the area of diagrammatical documentation; as a prototyping tool its functionality is limited at best. However Visio, like Omigraffle (below), is particularly suited to content map generation from CSV files. In the recent version, Visio 2007, the addition of the UML plugin has allowed for smoother importing of UML.
Visio has also spawned a number of add-on tools; Swipr (which is free) is the most relevant as it allows for rapid export of wireframes and screen flows into a clickable HTML prototype. This is very handy for creating the entire prototype in one go and not having to link it together after exporting.
Visio is only available on the Windows platform.
2. OmniGraffle Pro
Yes, I’m a little biased here; I do like OmniGraffle (price: $US199, demo available), especially the latest version. OmniGraffle is best suited as a tool for wireframes, screen flows, and content maps. It can also be used as a prototyping tool, with the ability to link canvases (pages). This allows you to produce a complete HTML prototype in one operation from OmniGraffle. You can, via the use of the notes function, easily annotate and complete the specification documentation for your prototype objects as you go.
OmniGraffle provides an extensive series of Visio import and export functions, allowing for cross-platform team compatibility. It also allows you to import your base content structure from a CSV or XML file via a fully customizable rule-based layout function; this can be especially handy for documenting large and ever changing content maps.
Support for OmniGraffle is supplemented by a large online community, as is evidenced by the resources available at Graffletopia. OmniGraffle is only available for the Mac.
3. Axure RP Pro
Axure (price: $US589, demo available) has rapidly become the darling of the user experience and information architecture communities. The application allows you to construct wireframe models, document functional specifications, and generate prototypes, all using a built-in version control system.
Axure is an extremely rapid wireframing and prototype generation system that I’ve personally found pays for itself very quickly – in terms of increased productivity – despite its mid-level price tag.
Axure allows for complete flexibility when designing an interface, from standard widgets, to custom builds, to an open-ended canvas. However, Axure’s true killer functionality is the generation of rich HTML prototypes and Ajax-like interactions between states. It’s a little like Dreamweaver and its JavaScript generation, but good.
A word of caution: if you do go looking under the hood of your HTML prototype, the code it generates is not for the fainthearted and should never be considered for use beyond a testing prototype.
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The one downside for me is that it only runs on Windows. If it was available on the Mac, I would be very happy with Axure.
4. iRise Pro
iRise (price: from $US6,995, demo available) was the first product of its type to market, and has advantages and disadvantages. The iRise product suite is very Axure-like in its functionality, and as the price suggests, is clearly geared towards an enterprise-level market.
Price aside, the one thing that I dislike about iRise is the user interface. Now this may be a personal preference, but you would think that if you’re going to be producing a tool for user experience professionals that you would at least make sure the UI is right. iRise suffers from a legacy interface that uses older GUI methods and techniques. I believe it’s in real need of an overhaul.
Still, if you’re looking at working with very large teams and need a comprehensive suite of products to span your entire prototype development life cycle, then iRise is worth a look.
5. Pencil
Pencil (free) is a Firefox plugin that professes to enable you to build wireframes and prototypes. As a prototyping tool it’s quite good, allowing you to quickly put together a reasonably high fidelity mockup. However, be aware you’ll still need to produce the visual design elements for Pencil, as it relies on dragging and dropping pre-made graphical elements.
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The output wireframe elements that ship with Pencil do tend to be based on the look and feel of a Windows desktop application. This really is undesirable for a web application, however you could modify this with your own page elements.
Another downside of Pencil is that its export functionality provides only a few image formats. This means that Pencil falls short of being a real interactive prototype development tool.
6. SmartDraw
SmartDraw (price: from $US297, demo available) is marketed at the business diagramming sector, it’s not really a dedicated wireframing and prototyping application, but that doesn’t mean that it should be dismissed completely.
It’s at the lower end of the market so you would expect a reduced functionality set compared to Axure. SmartDraw is aimed at the same market as Visio or OmniGraffle, with a standard template suite and few auto generation features. For prototyping SmartDraw allows you to add simple dynamic elements to a page, with the final output being a PDF file. There is no allowance for the representation of the transition between states on prototypes.
SmartDraw is only available for Windows, offering a degree of MS-Office Suite integration.
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7. MockupScreens
MockupScreens (price: from $US79, demo available) is a Windows-only application. It focuses primarily on the building of simple prototypes from a series of wireframes based around common screen elements.
The prototyping functionality is limited, and only available within the MockupScreens application. I do note that you can export the screens as image files or as a very limited HTML rendering. This product is very much at the bottom end of the market in terms of cost and functionality, however this may suit your needs.