Review: Balsamiq Mockups
Ok let me start off by saying “I love this application”. It does exactly what it says on the box, it’s fast, easy to use and the results are impressive.
So what is it? Well it’s an application that lets you create mock-ups for websites, desktop apps and even iPhone apps.
For instance here are some mock-ups for the FDD tracking app that I’m working on. It took less then 20 minutes to put these together.
One of the best things about the tool is the “UI controls”. For instance if you drop a grid object on to your page and click on it, you get a text area into which you can type comma separated values. Each line of text becomes a row in the grid and each value becomes a cell. If you type [] you get a checkbox, [x] gives you a checked checkbox, [text] gives you a hyperlink of the word text. It couldn’t be easier.
Check out this video to see it action:
and some more examples.
Balsamiq Mockups is an Adobe Air application so it automatically updates when a new release is available. It also means that it runs on multiple platforms, I have seen it running on Windows and Mac os without issue.
Each screen that is created is stored in a separate XML based file. Most of the UI controls can be set to link to another screen, this along with the full screen mode, allows you to easily walk people through your mock-ups on screen.
You can also export your mock-ups as .png files. Unfortunately it does not export to PDF which would be nice.
The desktop version of the tool is $79 which gives you updates for life, which is not a bad deal at all. There are also versions for JIRA, Confluence and XWiki.
My only gripes are that sometimes it is tricky to select objects when they are layered on top of one another. Also there is no way to build your own smart UI controls although you can draw just about any GUI control using the supplied primitive objects.
If need to do any kind of mock-ups then I cannot reccommend this tool enough. Download an evalution copy and try it for yourself. You won’t be disappointed.
Balsamiq Mockups is very cool
The nice people at Balsamiq have given me a copy of their Mockups tool to review (thanks Valerie).
I’m going to give it a good going over for a few days and then I’ll do a nice long write up. In the mean time here is short video to show you what it’s all about…
Its all about clarity
Over the last 15 odd years I have been involved with dozens of IT projects of all shapes, sizes. Recently I have been reflecting on why some of these projects were a dream and delivered successfully, whilst others were a complete nightmare and went horribly wrong.
An obvious factor is the size of the project but that does not ring true. I have been involved with huge projects that went like clockwork and small projects that just couldn’t seem to get off the ground. The same is true for projects with complex or simple domains; projects with untried technologies or projects with proven technologies.
So what was the differentiator?
After much pondering I have come to the conclusion that those projects that were most successful had a good deal of clarity. Clarity in what needed to be done, why it needed to be done and how it was going to be done.
So I’ve come up with a new catchphrase (which I intend to bandy about at every opportunity):
“CLARITY leads to FOCUS, FOCUS leads to DELIVERY”
Actually I really wanted to use VELOCITY in there somewhere and DELIVERY is just so so unsexy so perhaps its still a work in progress but I digress.
So what do I mean by clarity ? Well pretty much exactly what it’s definition says “The state of being clear in thought”.
Of course this isn’t a new concept, which is why we have the waterfall process with its BDUF (big design up front) approach. Unfortunately this process actually has the opposite effect because it tends to silo the project members around particular phases and then uses big fat documents as a means of communication between these silos. At each step of the way clarity around the why, what and how is typically eroded or even (as I have seen in some cases) corrupted, all of which leads to the classic customer reaction ,when they see their software for the first time, of “What the hell is that, thats not what I wanted”.
This of course is where agile processes come into play with their sleek processes that allow a project to deliver efficiently and successfully. Of course without clarity an agile project degenerates into a mess, with quality going out the window in an effort to meet iteration deadlines, constant quick fixes, a stressed out team and a failed project.
So how do you about gaining clarity?
The best approach I have seen is to get as many of the people who are going to be involved with the project into a room to work out the why, what and how. The group should include the stakeholders, end-users, subject matter experts, architects, UI designers, testers, business analysts, developers, project managers, infrastructure bods. Pretty much anyone who can add value to the process.
Don’t panic, even for large systems the effort involved for this is measured in hours and days, not weeks and months. I would however, suggest you find a good facilitator to keep what is typically a fairly large group of people focused.
Here are some techniques that I have used or seen used to nail down the why, what and how:
To capture the why, write a vision statement. It doesn’t have to be book. In fact put a limited on the length of the statement such as “25 words” or “3 sentences” or if you want to be particularly nasty: “7 words”.
To capture the what, you can uses any number of techniques. I find that visual ones work best (and are easily done on a whiteboard) so use-case diagrams, storyboards or UI wireframes and entity or domain models are the order of the day.
In a similar vein, to capture the how, nothing beats a deployment model and some sequence or activity diagrams (all in UML of course).
So to make your IT project a success make sure you have clarity and remember
“CLARITY leads to FOCUS, FOCUS leads to DELIVERY” :)
Check out Scott Ambler’s Agile Modelling site which covers some of the techniques above and has a bunch of other practical and interesting ideas.
