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by chrisbennet 5334 days ago
Keep in mind that Balsamiq prototypes look like rough sketches instead of "professional looking mockups" on purpose.

When you show a customer a mockup that is "just a sketch" (or looks like one) you can get their feedback on the layout and content.

When you give them a realistic looking mockup, the conversation can get bogged down in minutea like in "Can you make the background less blue? Maybe like Bob's shirt?" or "I don't like that font, can you...?" At which point you have to explain that it's only a mockup, not the actual product and politely try to steer them back to what you asked them in the first place.

Also, when they see a what looks like a finished product they think the work is mostly done which sets unreasonable expectations.
1 comments
smtlaissezfaire 5334 days ago
Yeah, that sounds like good advice, chris.

What if you could streamline the process and cover both the wireframing and mockup phases? The tool I'm thinking about building is very similar to other prototyping tools (like Balsamiq), but would basically take your wires and "upgrade them" to a more pro-looking mockup (after all, it's just a matter of switching out images).

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glimcat 5333 days ago
They already have that covered.

http://support.balsamiq.com/customer/portal/articles/135659#...

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smtlaissezfaire 5332 days ago
Which link specifically were you referring to?

I'm thinking that a bunch of the iphone mockups that I've seen end up with the same shared components - toolbars, tab bars, status bars, etc. Those standard components are really the same objects, just in a more hi fidelity fashion.

Also, AFAIK with those tools, once you export, there is no way to keep the wires and mocks in sync, right?

I've experienced times in a consulting shop where both the mocks + wires are being iterated on simultaenously (mostly because the product guy would use omnigraffle where the designer would use photoshop) - leading to mocks + wires that just didn't jive with each other. This created confusion among the dev, design, and product teams about what specifically we were building, leading to increased time to market.

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