
ForeUI: UI Prototyping Tool - jawngee
http://www.foreui.com/demos/demo11/
======
viraptor
A lesson for people who want to do a demo of their product: if you're not a
native English speaker and want to demo in English - please, please, please
pay some British/US/... girl with a sweet voice to read the text for you. I
survived only ~40 seconds of that screencast. We already suffer call centres
in India, because we don't have a choice. Here, I have a choice -- I can close
your website.

Edit: corrected the typo

~~~
crux_
On the one hand, I agree that finding a BBC Presenter Voice is the most
professional for this sort of thing.

On the other hand, your post struck me as loaded with racist and sexist
overtones. If you don't want to come across that way, you should be more
careful with your word choices.

Finally, unless I'm completely of base, the speaker has a Chinese accent.
Nothing India about it.

~~~
viraptor
Well... I see where you're coming from, but I assure you there was no racism.
Sexism... well - depends what's your take on it - a toned down, smooth voice
of a person of the opposite sex is generally considered "most pleasant".
That's how it's treated in marketing and that's how big companies make their
presentations to people who aren't already into the product. IT is dominated
by men, so a girl is a practical choice if you want to be successful.

Why no racism? I'm not a native speaker. I simply can't understand the demo in
some places. It's not a problem of the language per se. I'd tell the same
thing to people who can't speak in their own language clearly enough -- find
the "best voice" for your target audience and use it instead. But those would
be really rare cases - the most common problem is a native / not native
accent. Every time I know I don't need a proper dialog with a customer, I pass
the information back through the support people (native speakers). Customers
have a better experience this way.

As for the Indian call centres - it was just an example of a case where we
don't usually have a choice (banks, services, support, etc.) not a comment on
this exact accent. Still - reality, not racism.

PS. My choice of words might be caused by not being a native English speaker
myself <\- these problems are also what you want to avoid making a public demo
:)

~~~
moe
_a toned down, smooth voice of a person of the opposite sex is generally
considered "most pleasant"_

 _IT is dominated by men, so a girl is a practical choice if you want to be
successful._

That's actually not true. When you switch on the tube you will notice that
most commercials (except those that are supposed to have women identify
themselves with) are dominated by male voices. Being forced to use a female
voice in an ad is usually considered a weakness because male voices are more
effective in binding your attention and suggesting "trust".

Regardless I don't think all of this plays much of a role in a tech
screencast. I agree that I want to understand the damn thing, so get a
pleasant speaker (of any gender) and don't make me suffer. From there my
decision for or against a product will be influenced by so many details, I
doubt "pleasant voice" affects it much.

------
petervandijck
As someone who uses these tools professionally and has used/tested most of
them:

1\. How is this __better __than what people currently use? (Omnigraffle,
Visio, Axure etc)? Answer: it's not, it looks worse. Why would I use a product
that's worse?

2\. How is this __different __from what people currently use? Answer: it's
not. If not, you stood a chance.

3\. The website is really badly designed. Fire your designer.

4\. I agree with the comments about the accent (unfortunately). It's barely
understandable.

5\. Your pricepoint is wrong. If I'll pay 80$ for a tool, I'll pay 200$ for a
much better tool too (see above).

Sorry, but I wouldn't use this and can't imagine a scenario in which anyone
who is aware of the options would, at this stage. It's not better, and it's
not different.

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endergen
All this talk about accents and music choice is just way off base. It shows a
lack of experience on the part of a commenter in dealing with non native
speakers. People should not have to be slick and commercial sounding to get a
chance at your attention. Learn to listen to information as is and ignore mild
annoyances you have from cultural biases and you will be able to use more than
just slick local sources of information for learning.

I thought the tool looked pretty interesting. Until I try it out and re-
evaluate Balsamiq(or other products) I won't jump to conclusions as to which
is better. Tools are tools everyone should be constantly exploring new ones to
enhance their existing tools with new tricks or to switch when new tools are
just that much better.

~~~
jsankey
"People should not have to be slick and commercial sounding to get a chance at
your attention."

In a perfect world, I agree. But when you're marketing a product, you need to
deal in the real world, and the first impression counts. Personally I think
the worst problem is the visual design of the website, which doesn't look very
slick/professional. This matters when your target market is people that design
UIs! (The music is not great, and should probably be ditched, but I have no
idea what the problem is with the accent, I can clearly understand the
narration/.)

------
NikkiA
Well, it's a lot cheaper than 'GUI Design Studio' (which is $499 for a single
license), although the interface of ForeUI isn't quite as nice as Caretta's
app.

Sadly, I can't afford either.

~~~
uuilly
You could probably get pretty far w/ this, and it's free:

[http://qt.nokia.com/products/developer-
tools?currentflippero...](http://qt.nokia.com/products/developer-
tools?currentflipperobject=937ba3e952f85ef68ddbb7cb4b20fc19)

------
huhtenberg
Cute.

IBM had something very similar for OS/2 back in 90s ("Interface Builder" ?),
drag-drop, events, conditionals, script-like language, etc. Needless to say no
one ever used it for any serious projects. It is trivial for simple cases and
it was rather limiting for anything as complex as your average real world
project.

------
weeksie
Frankly I think the UI of that tool is atrocious. Balsamiq Mockups is what
prototyping software should be like, it's simple and intuitive.

This looks like it would be a pain to use, given the choice of ForeUI.
Frankly, I'd rather use Illustrator (or pencil and paper, depending on the
project).

~~~
antimora
For those who don't know Balsamiq Mockups, here is the URL to the demo
<http://www.balsamiq.com/products/mockups>

It's the best Mockup tool out there currently.

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chaosmachine
I liked the demo. Interesting to compare it with the demo of Balsamiq Mockups
(which is probably the inspiration).

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLysy3IPfFI>

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pkc
I am currently using Balsamiq Mocksups. I can't see how is it different from
Balsamiq Mockups. Why should I switch to another product which has nothing
different to offer. In my opinion it looks a little worse.

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mcantelon
Nice product. I like the ability to use different skins on the prototype UI.
The conditional logic shown at the end seemed limited, however, unless they
neglected to demo the complete functionality.

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jantiro
Very interesting tool, the different skins and the freedom of defining action
are lightspots.

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jcs
I stopped the video and left the site after I couldn't take anymore of the 70s
porn music.

