Felicia from Tag Design introduced me to Balsamiq Mockups : an application that allow you to rapidly draw wireframes.

And I mean rapidly.

I used Mockups for three different projects this past week. Two of them required fast action, and Balsamiq Mockups was just what I needed.

Until now, the software I've seen and used in this category of tools, can draw anything from company org charts and flow diagrams, through to pixel-perfect mockups of websites and desktop apps. Which is why they have steep learning curves and complex toolsets.

Not so with Mockups. It doesn't try to be the next Corel Draw, it simply wants to make it easy for you to draw simple mockups. That's why Balsamiq Mockups has a two-minute learning curve. Well, almost.

All you need to do is:

1. find a pre-drawn building element from a scrolling library

2. drag the element to the sketchpad below the library

3. edit the text that describes the element

4. drag the interface to the size and position you want

It is really that easy.

To give you an idea of what you can quickly dream up in Mockups - this design took about 20 minutes to complete:

Mockups has a wide range of buttons, navigation interfaces and media objects in it's libraries.

It is easy to group objects into a single object, and Mockup's interface to move objects forward or backward it simply delightful.

Another clever aspect of Mockups is that it gives a hand-drawn look to your mockup. This is great when you create wireframes for customers because when they see the sketch-like designs, they understand that you're busy with concepts, not visual designs. Which means they don't start talking about colours and logos, but concentrate on the words and interfaces.

Balsamiq Mockups is simple. It is not overly comprehensive, but also not highly flexible. There are a few things you can't do with it:

You can't print directly to a printer. You have to save your design as a PNG and then print the image. At least it automatically saved your image files to a new revision every time, which is handy.

You can select the size of text for a given element from a drop-down box, but you can't type in the text size.

And you know what? That's okay with me. I actually wouldn't want Mockups to become too advanced. I don't want it to do everything for everyone because making it too powerful will risk will cluttering up the interface, and the result may be a complex, increase learning curve.

I hope that as Mockups mature, it will retain the simple interface and balanced library-size, that enables me to create simple wireframes, rapidly.

Technorati Tags: balsamiq | wireframes | mockups