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Is there room in the market for a competitor in this space?
When you show a customer a mockup that is "just a sketch" (or looks like one) you can get their feedback on the layout and content.
When you give them a realistic looking mockup, the conversation can get bogged down in minutea like in "Can you make the background less blue? Maybe like Bob's shirt?" or "I don't like that font, can you...?" At which point you have to explain that it's only a mockup, not the actual product and politely try to steer them back to what you asked them in the first place.
Also, when they see a what looks like a finished product they think the work is mostly done which sets unreasonable expectations.
Keep in mind that Balsamiq prototypes look like rough sketches instead of "professional looking mockups" on purpose . When you show a customer a mockup that is "just a sketch" (or looks like one) you can get their feedback on the layout and content. When you give them a realistic looking mockup, the conversation can get bogged down in minutea like in "Can you make the background less blue? Maybe like Bob's shirt?" or…
What if you could streamline the process and cover both the wireframing and mockup phases? The tool I'm thinking about building is very similar to other prototyping tools (like Balsamiq), but would basically take your wires and "upgrade them" to a more pro-looking mockup (after all, it's just a matter of switching out images).
Keep in mind that Balsamiq prototypes look like rough sketches instead of "professional looking mockups" on purpose . When you show a customer a mockup that is "just a sketch" (or looks like one) you can get their feedback on the layout and content. When you give them a realistic looking mockup, the conversation can get bogged down in minutea like in "Can you make the background less blue? Maybe like Bob's shirt?" or…
Yeah, that sounds like good advice, chris. What if you could streamline the process and cover both the wireframing and mockup phases? The tool I'm thinking about building is very similar to other prototyping tools (like Balsamiq), but would basically take your wires and "upgrade them" to a more pro-looking mockup (after all, it's just a matter of switching out images).
http://support.balsamiq.com/customer/portal/articles/135659#...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, that sounds like good advice, chris. What if you could streamline the process and cover both the wireframing and mockup phases? The tool I'm thinking about building is very similar to other prototyping tools (like Balsamiq), but would basically take your wires and "upgrade them" to a more pro-looking mockup (after all, it's just a matter of switching out images).
They already have that covered. http://support.balsamiq.com/customer/portal/articles/135659#...
I'm thinking that a bunch of the iphone mockups that I've seen end up with the same shared components - toolbars, tab bars, status bars, etc. Those standard components are really the same objects, just in a more hi fidelity fashion.
Also, AFAIK with those tools, once you export, there is no way to keep the wires and mocks in sync, right?
I've experienced times in a consulting shop where both the mocks + wires are being iterated on simultaenously (mostly because the product guy would use omnigraffle where the designer would use photoshop) - leading to mocks + wires that just didn't jive with each other. This created confusion among the dev, design, and product teams about what specifically we were building, leading to increased time to market.
You can get pretty nice results that are somewhat interactive on the device itself.
Keynotopia is a pretty good mockup alternative for iPhone and iPad apps. It's not an application per se, but it's a set of templates for Keynote (or PowerPoint or Open Office). You export the result as a clickable PDF which works in a variety of viewers like GoodReader. http://keynotopia.com/ You can get pretty nice results that are somewhat interactive on the device itself.
Seems like the market is really fragmented - everything from traditional photo/vector graphics software (photoshop, illustrator), traditional wireframing (omnigraffle, etc), online wireframing (balsamiq) and even presentation software (keynote and powerpoint!)
Keynotopia seems like a smart move for those who tend to lean to the presentation side of things - though I'd find it hard to believe that a designer who likes (or is used to) working in illustrator or photoshop would want to start using keynote!