5 Best Prototyping Tools

Have you ever heard that UI/UX design is a significant aspect of building a website or application work? Making and modifying products driven by prototypes is spinning up and the prototyping tools come in any form or by any means. With so many UI/UX prototyping tools out there how do you guess which instrument to choose? Selecting the correct prototyping tools for mobile app design will increase the efficiency with half the diligence.

Prototyping is an imprescriptible side of development. It can help with concept reviews and feedback sharing in the early stage of a project. With interactive mockup of a site or mobile application, you’re able to “diagnose” any shortcomings in the flow and generic usability afore spending lots funds or time into development.

Of course, prototyping tools for UI/UX designers is a little magic and some kind of unique feature that helps simplify the job. For this reason we want to take into confidence with you about 5 best app prototyping tools we’re using in our company. We will try to make a cold-eyed comparison of:

1. Invision;

2. Flinto;

3. Pixate;

4. Axure;

5. Principle;

Best prototyping tools

So, to free you from wasting your precious time, effort and money, we decided to write a short article about the tools for prototyping interactive user interfaces. Empirically (in blood, sweat, and tears) we have found that the tools listed below will help you to nest egg.

Invision:

InVision is your choice if you need a web-based tool for prototyping interactive user interfaces for mobile and web. Have static sketches? Upload them into the program and transform into fully interactive layouts! Working with Photoshop or Sketch? InVision has an option to sync with your docs, allowing you to renovate your prototype instantly within your favorite software.

InVision might promote your workflow with:

• version control,

• previews,

• comments,

• and file synchronization.

It also proposes a bunch of animations and mobile native gestures (e.g. tapping, swiping, etc.).

InVision’s greatest feature is the ability to promote cooperation. You can share your mockups with the team, customers, or anyone else with the ability to leave comments in threads and the sections they need. This decreases possible problems from email conversations and helps ensure that alterations are realized as needed. Additionally, with the LiveShare component, communication can occur instantly in real-time via screen sharing that involves chat, collaborator-specific mouses, and sketching options.

 

Flinto:

Mobile app prototyping never was so simple. Flinto have some tools to build animations and the screen management to carry many application screens. It's easy to trace the flow of a multiple-screen app with all of its transitions and interactions. Import instruments and transition tags will help keep names and animation elements coherent over all screens. Want more control over fewer screens? Principle is a decision.

Flinto’s main features are:

• Transition Designer,

• Sketch import & Sharing.

The Transition Designer helps you modify animations between multiple screens based on screen position and the animation we attach to the transition.

Few words about Sketch docs: the plugin can transform your Sketch project in separate objects and keep all names.

 

Pixate:

Pixate is another interactive prototype tool that helps web designers in testing mobile interaction designs, animations, and wireframes for smartphones, tablets and other devices.

In short: it has a regular interface and supports drag-n-drop function in individual animations.

Why will you choose Pixate? Because of it’s greatest built-in functions for interaction with these animations via perfect user actions conversion to some kind of mobile gesture.

What else? You can test your app on the mobile device, for example, or use it’s own cloud service for cooperation with the team or customers.

 

Axure:

Guess, we can say that this is a UX-pioneer launched in 2002 and still remains well-known in UX designers circle nowadays. Undoubtedly, Axure is one of the most across-the-board (if we’re talking about functions) prototyping tools. You can use it to design click-through wireframes, user flows, and sitemaps just like interactive prototypes. It helps you to append interactions, create Master Pages.

Another fact you might want to know - this instrument has some pre-build components and widgets libraries. If you’re a pro, you can take advantage of Axure RP Pro to make complex, interactive prototypes, but it might take some time to master and some programming skills. It can’t be determined to mobile prototyping tools because it’s not ‘mobile ready’ and time-consuming.

 

Principle:

And now, let us introduce you our lovemark - Principle. We are using this tool here in Erminesoft and we pleased with the functionality and capabilities. It’s like a Holy Graal for designers. All you have to know, that this software is some kind of a mix from other great programs.

The best thing about Principle is timeline animation. If you know something about Adobe After Effects or Adobe Flash it would be rather simple to create animation. Other great features are Animate View and Drivers View. Let’s talk about it.

Animate View. First of all, it is used to animate among artboards. This timeline lie between any action (tap, long press, scroll, etc.) and a resulting artboard. You can use it to animate components, of the identic labels, between several individual artboards. From that point, you are able to establish and change the lasting and delay of the associated components within their transition.

Drivers View. The Drivers view brings us greater monitorship in animation of things things on the basis of the action on the screen or changing the qualities. For example, when you are dragging some element across the screen, you are able to animate something else.

Pros:

• Preview window (can be separated to extra window);

• Principle Mirror app used to preview Principle files;

• Artboards;

• Built-in interactions;

• Integral events;

• Easy to learn;

Cons:

• No .psd import;

• No 3D transformations;

 

	Invision	Flinto	Pixate	Axure	Principle
Platform	Web	OSX	Web	OS X, Windows	OS X
Destination platform	Android, iOS, Web	iOS	Android, iOS	Any	iOS
Gestures	+	+	+	-	+
Transitions	+	+	+	+	+
Design	-	+	-	+	-
Price	From $0	$99	From $0	From $289	$99
Pros	Version control system	Transition Designer	Easy to learn	Great prototyping interactions	Timelines
Cons	Poor customer suppor	Limited transitions	Bugs	Inconvenient	No 3D

 

Afterwords

In this article we have tried to highlight some ui prototyping tools and ux prototyping tools we are using in our daily work. We hope that this will help you make your design and development process more rapid, productive and easy.

If you are wondering what ui design services you might get, just check out our site for more information.

Despite all the differences, we believe that in your toolbox there will be a place for these programs. Especially for Principle - in our work, it's an indispensable instrument.

 

Need a perfect design for your app? Our Senior UI/UX Designer Simon will perform true magic for you, just drop a line here:  [email protected].