Jure Cuhalev

21 Nov, 2008

Hi-fidelity prototyping with OmniGraffle Pro

Posted by: Jure Cuhalev In: usability

Getting a chance to work in industry that you’ve heard so much in school is a really great experience. Today I’m hyped up about designing user interfaces and writing specifications for how things should work.

Image by snowcrash via Flickr

Personally, I’m a big fan of paper prototypes. A technique where you create low-fidelity prototypes that allow you to iterate quickly and without need to invest a lot of time in creating ideas. Trying this for a while now, I’ve learned that just paper prototypes are not enough. People just doesn’t take them too seriously.

This time around, I’m experimenting with upgrading my paper prototypes with computerized version. Nothing too high-fidelity, just printed wireframes in nice boxes and with a rough copy in place.

What about tools? I decided to experiment with OmniGraffle Pro (being a Mac Head) and some excellent stencils from Graffletopia.

To make the whole process easier, I followed a great video from Michael Angeles, Creating prototypes with OmniGraffle, it shows you how to use Actions->Jump tool to create interactive PDF’s that you can use to simulate actual user interaction. It also quickly presents good layout technique, how you’re supposed to have a Master layer with overall grid and then just create different canvases for new layers. Best spent 5 minutes of last week, watching that.

Summary: Go watch the video, and give a bit more hi-fi prototypes a chance, after being happy with your paper ones.

Tags: Graffletopia, High fidelity, OmniGraffle, Paper prototyping, User interface

ghosttie

I've never used prototyping software, but it would probably make my life easier if I did. Do you know of a Windows alternative to OmniGraffle?

Jure Cuhalev

People often use Microsoft Visio as alternative for OmniGraffle. There's
also a wide collection of more powerful prototyping tools.

Matic Bitenc

I use it at work daily for the very same purpose and I can tell you it can be frustrating just as it can be enjoyable. There are some display glitches, for example, you can make a perfect alignment of lines under 500% zoom, but at 100% it'll look as if there's space between. The panes and the default tool settings could be designed much better too, which is somewhat ironic for software used to create interfaces.

Marko

I find all prototyping tools I found so far lacking in one way or other. But worst is probably still better than none.

david_rozman

for more interactive prototypes check out:
http://taubler.com/oversite/ and http://www.axure.com/

sharoncfejes

This time around, I’m fidelity 401k experimenting with upgrading my paper prototypes with computerized version. Nothing too high-fidelity, just printed wireframes in nice boxes and with a rough copy in place.

tommyms1972

To make the whole process easier, I followed a great video from Michael Angeles, Creating prototypes with OmniGraffle, it shows you how to use Actions->Jump tool to create interactive PDF’s that you can use to simulate actual user interaction. It also quickly presents good layout fidelity 401k technique, how you’re supposed to have a Master layer with overall grid and then just create different canvases for new layers. Best spent 5 minutes of last week, watching that.

Hi-fidelity prototyping with OmniGraffle Pro

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