Ask HN: Tools for iOS app prototyping/wireframing | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Tools for iOS app prototyping/wireframing

4 pointsnnd7 comments

I'm looking for a tool to do wireframing and fast prototyping (including interactive previews) with templates for native iOS widgets.

What do you reckon are the best ones?

I've tried Fluid UI and Blueprint (iPad app) - both really solid.

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XCode's Storyboard works better than you would think, especially if you're just at the wireframing stage and not necessarily worried about getting all of the design elements in there.

There are a few things (like Page view controllers) that don't lend themselves well to Storyboard-as-mockup, but overall it's a pretty good solution.

Use static prototypes with your table view controllers to simulate multiple table cells, for instance.

On the down side, it's not as easily shareable as an HTML-based prototype that some of the mockup tools will create.

This. It seriously frustrates me when I see new wire framing tools pop up for iOS since just using Xcode will be about the same speed (if not faster) to set something up with and its now something a developer (or yourself) can just modify without rebuilding everything.

I'm a fan of pencil and paper sketches to begin and then code after that. Xcode makes it so easy to visually design things that I don't even mock things up in Illustrator or PS any more. And this is coming from someone who has a graphic design degree and works as a professional software (mostly iOS) engineer.

For lightweight storyboarding I use Lucidchart (they have a set of iOS-specific icons and such which save a little time, but nothing fancy). For full-color clickable demos I've had a lot of fun with invisionapp.com That being said, several clients of mine have preferred balsamiq.com, I'm not sure why exactly, they just found it easier to use.

There's a WWDC session where Apple designers use Keynote to prototype iOS apps. It's actually impressive--you can fake the animations and interactions to be really close to the real thing.

https://developer.apple.com/videos/wwdc/2014/#223

I use proto.io and really like it. It's got the templates you're looking for, but can also do some pretty advanced (for a prototyping tool) animations and UI logic using variables.

I made Flux, it's an animation transition designer for iOS, you can get a free trial from www.nthstate.com/Flux

Check out Flinto — no templates, but excellent for adding interaction to hand-drawn wireframes and prototypes.

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