[IxDA Discuss] MS Office app prototyping bake-off?

[Sam]

Paul,

We have a prototyping tool based on MS Visio that meets most of the
requirements.

A demo can be viewed at http://www.stpsoft.co.uk/story

Key points:
1. Can be used to prototype hi-fi Window apps with clickable navigation
between screens.
2. Majority of customers are in the financial sector, so prototyping
financial management software should not be a problem.
3. A background image can be embedded in the Windows form shape, and
components can be overlayed.
4. Right-clicking the form and selecting 'Set Tab Order' automatically sets
the tab order.
5. Defaults for components can be set.
6. Not able to display the blinking cursor in the first field :(
7. Screen flow diagram containing thumb prints of the screens with the flows
can be generated.
8. Prototype can be exported to HTML for viewing in a browser.
9. Test scripts can be generated.
10. UI Spec and Functional Spec can be generated.
11. Prototype is version controlled.


Regards,

Sam (software through people)

-----Original Message-----
From: discuss-bounces at lists.interactiondesigners.com
[mailto:discuss-bounces at lists.interactiondesigners.com] On Behalf Of
Sherman, Paul
Sent: Thursday, August 03, 2006 3:00 PM
To: 'ixda'
Subject: [IxDA Discuss] MS Office app prototyping bake-off?

[Please voluntarily trim replies to include only relevant quoted material.]

Hello IxDA, 

My team of interaction designers is interested in determining the most
efficient and high-fidelity prototyping tool among three alternatives:
Visio, Access, and Excel. 

They design interactions for a Windows-only, desktop-based financial
management software product.

The team's highest priority requirement for the prototyping tool: it has to
support dropping an image onto a canvas and overlaying workable controls
onto the image.

They would also like to be able to set tab order. It would be nice to be
able to set defaults, for example a selected radio button in a radio button
group. They'd also like to be able to set a blinking cursor in the first
field when that field is a text box. These last two are nice-to-haves.

They are not so concerned with linking screens in a workflow, but that would
be also be n-t-h. I suspect this functionality will become more important to
them in the future.

One last thing: they are not so concerned about their prototypes displaying
inside an Access or Excel frame, although of course they would prefer that
their prototypes were not obviously contained with another application. 

I'd love to hear what this community has to say about this. I'm also open to
other tool suggestions. 

Paul Sherman
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