[IxDA Discuss] Pros and Cons of Wireframing tools

[Mark Bardsley]

I use Visio quite a bit. It can do most everything I have seen people
mention, especially the basic things like export to PDF, hyperlinked HTML
for medium fidelity prototypes, etc. As for layers you can easily use
multiple backgrounds, _document_ stencils, and so forth for the same effect.

- Mark

-----Original Message-----
From: discuss-bounces at lists.interactiondesigners.com
[mailto:discuss-bounces at lists.interactiondesigners.com] On Behalf Of Cindy
Blue
Sent: Thursday, February 08, 2007 7:49 AM
To: Bill Bulman; Kiesel, Jeffrey (User Experience)
Cc: discuss at ixda.org
Subject: Re: [IxDA Discuss] Pros and Cons of Wireframing tools

At a previous client site, the team was using Illustrator and InDesign,
much as Bill described it.  I fell in love with two things about
Illustrator:  1) saving the files as .pdf (while preserving the editing
capabilities) allowed me to quickly send any screen to any team member
or stakeholder, and 2) easily scaling drawings.  You can simply place
several screens (pdfs) into one master document and add some arrows and
notations to express the entire flow.  Thanks to vectors, they are still
readable.  Update any of the original files, and the flow is
automatically updated, too!

I used Visio for years, mostly because of the quick-and-dirty factor.
Lately I've used layers more, which make it so much easier to manage
multiple versions of screens, but it is still a bit cumbersome at times.



Bill said --

If you are a designer, I figure you probably have some familiarity  
with Illustrator. We use a combination of Illustrator and Indesign  
for our wireframing, which works quite well in my opinion.   
Illustrator allows us to create pixel perfect wireframes that are  
elegant and beautiful, while being easy to update(which is incredibly  
important). We incorporate those wireframes into an Indesign document  
that allows us to add behavior notes to the wireframes.  
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