

What is the best tool to draw an idea? - abhishekdesai

I have one twitter based idea which I have put in words. But I would like to have a prototype which contains screens and will show how exactly the homepage, other pages will look like. Basically it should explain the complete flow of the application. What is the best and easiest tool to do that?
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movix
Sounds mad, but even though we have CS3 and most other graphics/design
packages, we use the drawing tools in Powerpoint a lot to do quick web page
layouts or site designs, regardless of what PP's actually meant for.

The reasons are this: anyone can use the tools without have to learn anything,
it's really quick, the way it works tends to make you keep things simple (very
important), you can create a template page and then cmd+V it across all the
other pages (slides), you can scroll through the pages (try doing that in
Photoshop), easy output to pdf/jpgs etc if you want to share and of course if
you want to present the design...well 'nuff said.

If you're designing for Twitter I'm assuming that graphically you're doing
something very clean and simple. This method helps you keep it that way.

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abhishekdesai
Sounds like a cool idea. Never thought of PP in this way. Will surely give it
a try.

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movix
Here's one we're working on to give you an idea:
<http://www.movix.co.uk/reelsapp.jpg>

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satyajit
If you're on Mac, OmniGraffle! <http://balsamiq.com/> on the web is good for
prototyping as well. Windows, hmmm .... Vizio???

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chrischen
Wow I've been using pencil but I keep losing the paper. This is good!

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andymism
OmniGraffle and Balsamiq are great for higher fidelity prototyping, but I find
that the precision it allows and the care I end up taking pushing my mouse
gets in the way of getting ideas down.

I usually stick to a fat pen and paper or whiteboard. When I'm done, I scan
each page or take photos of sections of the whiteboard and then load them up
as a presentation in Google Docs (easy to share with partners).

No losing papers or accidental erasures there!

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idlewords
Pencil

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pvg
I thought paper might also be handy but on deeper consideration, I realized
you are right.

"I have this twitter-based idea. I've brought a pencil so you can stab your
eyes out while I explain"

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yannis
HTML

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abhishekdesai
HTML is good but I guess it may take more time

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yannis
Yes it may take a day or two, but there is nothing like communicating an
interface and what you actually want to do with an actual pre-prototype. I
view it as a step before communicating with code see
[http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2009/01/communicating-
with-...](http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2009/01/communicating-with-
code.html)

It will also help later on in allocating tasks and workflow to other members
of the team. As you develop code just update the prototype.

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abhishekdesai
Cool

