14 Google Tools You Didn't Know Existed. Pitching App Ideas? AppGyver Delivers Mobile App Prototypes In Minutes, No Technical Know-How Needed. Although there are a ton of DIY app builders out there, the majority of them are either designed for those with a little bit of coding know-how, or involve drag-and-drop components that are used to create a basic app or mobile website. A new startup called AppGyver (rhymes with MacGyver!) Is different. It’s a mobile app prototyper, not an app builder, and it’s aimed at those who need to rapidly iterate on designs during the app-development process. AppGyver was started a couple of years ago by entrepreneurs Marko Lehtimaki (CEO) and co-founder Henri Vahakainu, but it didn’t go into private beta testing until just this December.
“To pitch our ideas to brands, it would always take time for us and our designers to put together some things so that people on the other side could understand what we were trying to pitch,” explains Lehtimaki. “It’s more for designers and product managers – those kinds of people,” he explains. “Startups love it, because they iterate so fast,” Lehtimaki says. Monitter : real time, live twitter search and monitoring. Interaction design and rapid prototyping with Fireworks. In the following four short video presentations, I demonstrate how to use Adobe Fireworks CS4 for information and interaction design and creating interactive prototypes quickly, and how you can use Fireworks as a design tool that fits into your complete design process, from concept to development. Before creating an interactive prototype, you need to create effective wireframes that define the structure and organization of each page and include representative content.
Fireworks CS4 allows you to build all of your pages in a single document by creating structured layout patterns with grids and guides. Fireworks includes reusable symbols for common user interface components, too—such as buttons, check boxes, and combo-boxes—so you can focus on crafting strong designs rather than drawing and recreating individual interface components every time. The design tools in Adobe Creative Suite 4 work well together for the entire design process. Create Your Free Website. Balsamiq. Fireworks Wireframing Kit - Part 2. Quotes Another freebie from the awesome Fireworks Evangelist Linus Lim /via @ chunwui Preview Download Kit Map and Map Pointers As the year 2011 nearing to an end and begins with a new 2012 full of surprises for our favorite tool, Adobe Fireworks, we bid goodbye with another wireframe freebie Maps and Maps Pointers in vector ready file from the person who speaks and breathes Adobe Fireworks, Linus Lim .
He is one of the Fireworks Evangelist who I personally look up to for some cool Fireworks awesomeness! To know more about him check out his twitter account /via @chunwui and also check his blog Fireworks Interviews , a blog dedicated for Fireworks users as their main web designing tool. Preview of Ultimate Adobe Fireworks Wireframing Kit A few days back I posted at Dribbble one of my first shots, a sample of my upcoming ultimate freebie for the New Year!
Comment Box This awesome freebie resource is contributed by Linus Lim . Designing interactive products with Fireworks. How we work at Cooper At Cooper, we design a wide variety of interactive products for platforms, including the desktop, the web, and mobile devices. Our design teams are small and usually consist of an interaction designer, design communicator, visual designer and, if there is a hardware component, industrial designer. The interaction designer and design communicator work together to design and document the behavior of the interface, while the visual designer is responsible for the interface's visual appearance. The industrial designer handles the physical form factor of hardware. Finally, the team is managed by an engagement lead who designs the engagement and provides guidance and direction to the team.
During the solution-creation phases of a typical project, a design team begins storyboarding scenarios on whiteboards and then transfers these sketches to the screen, where they are iterated and refined over and over. Where Fireworks fits in. Wireframes Magazine. Tutorial9 - The Best Resources for Designers, Every Day. PowerStory - PowerPoint plugin for authoring Use Cases, UI Storyboards and automatically generate Test Cases.
Build web wireframes for your web application design. Wireframing in Powerpoint? It Works! It’s important for designers to translate the ideas in their heads into a tangible form that stakeholders can relate to. Prior to writing any code, wireframes are a great way to quickly map out the functionality and flow of a website or application. This helps anticipate conflicts (“That's not what I had in mind") early in the process, at a point where they are painless to correct. Dedicated wireframing tools are in abundance, so you might be surprised that my weapon of choice for sketching wireframes is Microsoft PowerPoint. PowerPoint makes it possible for stakeholders and non-techies to participate in the design process.
When exchanging PowerPoint slides over email, you can be fairly certain everyone will be able to view and edit them. As well, the design capabilities of PowerPoint are far better than the application's reputation would indicate. Arranging and Layering Support Whatever simplifies is useful. Import/Export Facilities Adding Interactivity Making Use of Masters. Card Sorting: Designing Usable Categories. Review by Matthew Sanders Donna Spencer’s debut Card Sorting: Designing Usable Categories ( Amazon US ) distills several years experience applying card sorting techniques to web projects into a highly practical guide on card sorting. Some information architecture books take a general approach and cover a large range of topics in a single book. These books serve an important purpose of explaining what information architecture is, best practice principles, and how to communicate designs. Because they cover a broad range of topics they can only go into so much detail, and in the nuts and bolts of a project can leave you with unanswered questions.
Card sorting is one of a range of techniques (including interviews, surveys, and search term analysis) that can be used to give insights about how people group information, and what language people use to think about these groups. (Click to enlarge) Chapters are short, but do a good job of describing what you need to know. Rating: About the Reviewer.