Wireframing & Prototyping Essential Skills

Would have loved to see how prototyping fits in to the development process—and how prototypes turn into working code.

another good overview of the design flow, and demos of tools.

Would have been nice to know if there are open source / good free tools available?

enjoyable and relevant presentation, though!

Liked this talk a lot, especially the live demos of the various prototyping tools. Was impressed with the SketchFlow demo as I was not familiar with the capabilities of that tool.

Hi All,
I am doing some research on good open source apps that you can use for prototyping. Keep in mind that Balsamiq is $79.

I Supposed that this was a good beginner level overview on wireframing/Prototyping. The speaker highlights Sketch Flow by MS as one of the wireframing tools but it's not widely used in the UI/UX field. Not only that, it's not a simple application to master and it's more geared toward someone with development background. She did recommend other tools like Balsamiq, Fireworks, Illustrator, and InDesign, etc. However, the more common tools out there are Omni Graffle and Axure. I found the presentation a little bit bias based on her personal preferences vs the industry standards. I was a little disappointed.

As a developer who wanted to learn more about design, I thought this was a great talk. It contained lots of good advice; iterate quickly, throw out designs, focus on structure over style, always keep in mind the goals of the design. Jennifer also did a good job of introducing several of the tools that she uses from pencil and paper to Sketchflow and Balsamiq.

I have a UX focus and this was better than I expected. Good comparison of tools - which are crucial to success. The right tools help us move fast, iterate often, and not fall in love with our prototypes. Loved the actual demo of various tools - this can sometimes be risky to do in a live presentation. The risk paid off. I'd encourage developers to try prototyping early in the process if you don't have a dedicated UX person or team. Not ideal, but better than nothing and will likely save you changing code later.

I'm not a UX/UI person, and what I liked about this talk was that watching Jennifer work in the programs gave me a better feel for how someone in that role approaches their work. And I think that'll give me more insight in the future for how best to work with my colleagues that are in that job when we are trying to develop the best product we can.

I also really appreciate how democratic she was about choosing the winners of the books. Some of the other speakers just seemed to throw the books out to the first person who raised their arm up so that they could get it over with and get on with their talk. She was one of the fairest about it, even if dealing with the paper and bag cut into her speaking time.

Thanks for the nice comments. I wanted to keep this session basic because there are many developers who need an introduction to the design portion of app development.UX is not only about being an designer. it is mostly about organizing content and structure.
I am sorry that I did not show all options. I am familiar with Omni Graffle and Axure, but have not dealt with many clients using them. It would have been fair to at least include some information and screen grabs.
As far as free prototyping software, I have not found any that offer the sketchy look, but there is http://quirktools.com/ where you can create unlimited sketchy wireframes for just $6.00. Hope that helps!

Nice overview of sketchy tools. I never thought to use Adobe tools for this, that was a cool idea. I also liked the simple rules of thumb "make sure users can find their goals" and when collaborating on design with users "focus on structure not style"! Thanks for sharing your insights.

Good presentation of tools for prototyping.