In this huge world of UI designing, as a designer lots and lots of ideas come to our mind which can be sometimes best and sometimes not so.
But how we come to know that without implementing them in reality.
Now here’s the solution for that called as Prototyping Tool. It helps designers in specific working for their needs.
Prototyping and Popular Tools for UI Designers
Presentation of ideas related to UI into reality or close to that is prototyping.
Ravi Bhadauria –Director (ADMEC MULTIMEDIA INSTITUTE)
Prototyping tools allow designers to implement their ideas into reality to experience how their imagination will work when it will get completed.
These tools help you simulating the flow of the application, in testing their performance and in creating the great user experience (UX) for websites and mobile applications without doing a single line of code.
There are lots of prototyping tools available with different goals for different users like wireframing, designing, prototyping, export assets for UI developers, etc.
Designers use different prototyping tools according to their needs. Both types of tools are available simple as well as advanced for designing prototypes.
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How should you choose the best tool for your project?
With a long list of Wireframing, Designing, and Prototyping Tools in hand and considering which one is best that can fulfill all your needs is not an easy task. But there are a few points that should be considered while choosing a tool because a particular tool could not fulfill all your needs. In order to choose the right prototyping tool, these few factors will assist you in research.
1. Adaptation
Choose that tool always which you can analyze and adapt easily. It takes a lot of time to completely understand and learn any prototyping tool.
2. Sharing
Teamwork has always been essential for great design work. So, check your tool if it is suitable for collaboration with your other team members.
3. Usage
When you are selecting a prototyping tool, always compare the tool with the requirements of your design and the tools used regularly by you. Feature of integration with other applications should be there in the Prototyping tool. If it has then the tool is quite suitable for your designing.
4. Use and Comfort
This tool is easy to use and comfortable which is the only important thing for the designer in order to save time and for growth in output. The tool you are choosing should reduce the number of steps rather than increasing it.
5. Price
A lot of Prototyping tools are available out here with a lot of features but there is a problem with these tools. These tools do not fit our budget so, we must be careful while choosing these.
Top tools for UI designers
Adobe XD
Adobe XD is one of the younger members of Adobe family. Adobe XD is getting favorite among users for speeding up their work. Duplicating the elements is quite easier than pasting or copying the elements. In this Prototyping tool “Repeat Grid” feature is growing fast. Adobe XD also integrates with a lot of Productivity apps and can easily create animations between artboards.
This tool allows you to design high-fidelity designs but with few restrictions. If you are an Adobe fan than it is really worth because it’s just a jump if you have been using Photoshop.
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JustInMind
This prototyping tool is for web applications and mobile applications both. Because this tool allows for creating attractive simulations and designs. This tool also provides us the feature of exporting a wireframing prototype with HTML, providing convenient browsing in any browser. By using JustInMind tool you can easily combine your identities and elements to your prototyping designs.
Even you can use them easily by dispatching to your HTML for presentations. And also, can generate specifications documentation easily in the word document also which is an easy way without having any knowledge of programming languages. This tool is highly known for high-quality work and is available at a very steep cost.
InVision Prototyping Tool
InVision Tool is one of the prominent prototyping applications which lets the designers create prototyping projects more professionally and simply. You can even manage the whole project by using its “Proper management” feature. Clients can easily give their feedback directly on the prototype, which is smoothly handled by the team.
In Vision also has the collaborative click through prototyping tools used for the web and mobile both. InVision gives us the facility of elevating quality, iterating quickly and shipping fast.
It was discontinued in March 2023.
Axure
One of the robust Prototyping tools for websites and applications is Axure. It provides you entire product design workflow. By using this tool, you can explore new ideas on a digital whiteboard. In comparison with other Prototyping tools, Axure is quite thick and complicated can say it’ up to the designer how much patience they have. Axure tool is for those kinds of designers who are engaged in working with complex desktop products. Designers choose Axure because it’s a quite familiar and powerful tool. In simple words, we can say that it’s just a matter of choice of the right tool for the right design.
Sketch
Web Sketch is quite similar to Photoshop as it allows you to manipulate and edit the photos. This tool easily adapts to changing styles, size, and layout to allow you to create beautiful and high-quality artwork till the end from the beginning. In designing the repeating of elements is quite common like buttons, bars, and many more things. By using this tool copy-pasting can be easily done.
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Balsamiq Wireframing Tool
Balsamiq Wireframing tool is well known for its speed and is available with the convenience of creating mock designs on a digital medium. This tool provides designers to use pre-designed icons and items and even they can draw components by themselves. We can consider it more as a wireframing tool then a prototyping tool if the user is not a professional designer than this tool can be used because it allows creating simple and static wireframes.
These tools have their own advantages and are used for different needs such as Wireframing, Designing, Prototyping, and Sharing.
Here the thing is not about which tool is best, the thing is about which one is best for you. When you are choosing a Prototyping or Wireframing Tool you must know what are your strengths and what are your weaknesses.
In short, we can say that every tool has its own features it is up to you what you need. Please share your questions and suggestions in the below-given comments area.
