

Ask HN: Tools for iOS app prototyping/wireframing - nnd

I&#x27;m looking for a tool to do wireframing and fast prototyping (including interactive previews) with templates for native iOS widgets.<p>What do you reckon are the best ones?<p>I&#x27;ve tried Fluid UI and Blueprint (iPad app) - both really solid.
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jefflinwood
XCode's Storyboard works better than you would think, especially if you're
just at the wireframing stage and not necessarily worried about getting all of
the design elements in there.

There are a few things (like Page view controllers) that don't lend themselves
well to Storyboard-as-mockup, but overall it's a pretty good solution.

Use static prototypes with your table view controllers to simulate multiple
table cells, for instance.

On the down side, it's not as easily shareable as an HTML-based prototype that
some of the mockup tools will create.

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bennyg
This. It seriously frustrates me when I see new wire framing tools pop up for
iOS since just using Xcode will be about the same speed (if not faster) to set
something up with and its now something a developer (or yourself) can just
modify without rebuilding everything.

I'm a fan of pencil and paper sketches to begin and then code after that.
Xcode makes it so easy to visually design things that I don't even mock things
up in Illustrator or PS any more. And this is coming from someone who has a
graphic design degree and works as a professional software (mostly iOS)
engineer.

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MalcolmDiggs
For lightweight storyboarding I use Lucidchart (they have a set of iOS-
specific icons and such which save a little time, but nothing fancy). For
full-color clickable demos I've had a lot of fun with invisionapp.com That
being said, several clients of mine have preferred balsamiq.com, I'm not sure
why exactly, they just found it easier to use.

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mattquiros
There's a WWDC session where Apple designers use Keynote to prototype iOS
apps. It's actually impressive--you can fake the animations and interactions
to be really close to the real thing.

[https://developer.apple.com/videos/wwdc/2014/#223](https://developer.apple.com/videos/wwdc/2014/#223)

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drewcon
I use proto.io and really like it. It's got the templates you're looking for,
but can also do some pretty advanced (for a prototyping tool) animations and
UI logic using variables.

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nthState
I made Flux, it's an animation transition designer for iOS, you can get a free
trial from www.nthstate.com/Flux

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mietek
Check out Flinto — no templates, but excellent for adding interaction to hand-
drawn wireframes and prototypes.

