When communicating with clients, quality representation of our idea is very important. Client wants to see what your vision is, to have a clear picture of how it meets the demands of the market, and how it interacts with the users.
When choosing the right software to develop your prototype, you should consider which characteristics and features are essential to your work, which software can you easily adapt to and what fits your design process best.
A factor in choosing the right software is also your team, or better say if you are working within a team, as you would then require a software which you can share between yourselves. You would also need a program compatible with other design tools you already use, to avoid having to download loads of side programs for UI design.
Let’s take a look at five best tools on the market in 2018:
Sketch
For those of you who are already used to Photoshop or Illustrator, Sketch is something you would easily adapt to. It is based on vectors, which ease the whole process of design, it is very intuitive and the simplicity of it helps you develop an interface super quickly.
One of its most popular features is nested symbols – the ability to add very simply pre-designed buttons, bubbles, widgets and even some more complex mechanisms. Great feature you can find useful is the ability to export your design into code, which enables easy implementation into, for example, web design.
Sketch is only available for Mac, comes with a free trial, and its full version can be purchased for $99.
InVision
A tool which integrates with Sketch, InVision is dominating the UI/UX market without any doubt. The greatest benefit coming from this amazing software is it’s support to team work – within the program itself you can coordinate your project, manage tasks, follow the development and keep notes for the rest of your team.
This program is compatible with many other useful tools for project management, such as Trello, Slack and Dropbox. InVision will make your offer to the client way more impressive with the ability to offer guided tours, bringing them a presentation that will blow their minds away. Among companies which had their UI/UX prototypes developed using this tool are Twitter, LinkedIn and Uber, which gives us an excellent review of this software.
It is compatible for Mac and Windows users, it is free for one project, and price varies from $15 to $99 per month, depending on your needs.
Balsamiq
Balsamiq offers one of the easiest ways to create a mockup, dropping the elements on the board and moving them around. Everyone can master in using this amazing program. It is very useful for rough sketching of prototypes for fast delivery of your idea to the client.
It comes with a big library of elements (icons, images), enabling you to do a simple wireframe. This is not the program you would use to develop a complex prototype for an app, it is rather intended for static wireframes and for relatively new designers in the world of prototyping.
Available for Mac and Windows, comes with a 30-days free trial and the cost of the license is $89.
Origami
Developed by Facebook, this software offers you a possibility to easily design and test your idea. It allows you to import your designs from Photoshop and Sketch, where you can adapt them and make them animated and interactive.
Origami also enables you to export the elements of your prototype, send them to engineers and come step closer to your product. It is recommended when you are working with a contemporary interface and developing a modern and innovative idea.
By using an app Origami Live, you can explore your work directly on your devices in real time.
This program is also reserved for Mac users, while it is absolutely free to use.
Webflow
Webflow seems to have dominated the market as the most functional software for building the websites ever. The idea behind this incredible tool is for a designer to be able to construct a website without having to write the code.
Webflow operates similar to Photoshop, although it offers you the possibility to edit the code as well. It is great for web animation, interactive design and responsive web designs, and it also integrates Google Fonts. The final product of your work can be exported in HTML, CSS or JavaScript, but some might recommend getting the hosting with Webflow, as it is one of the fastest technologies on the market.
It is compatible with Windows and Mac, free for two projects, and from $16 to $35 per month for more projects.
If none of these top 5 programs work for you, some of our honorable mentions you can try are Framer, Adobe XD, Justinmind, Fluid UI, Axure, Principle, Atomic and Proto.io.
Explore these options for unlimited creativity in prototyping your design!
About the author:
Nina Petrov is an activist, poet, performer and mathematician. She communicates with the world mostly through words, movement and equations, but sometimes also by speaking very loudly. The only truth she could say about herself is that she keeps changing every day, never stops learning and interacting with her surroundings.