Mockplus Review–FASTER, SIMPLER PROTOTYPING!
In the progress of application design, what is the most important? Obviously, an ingenious conception. That is the foundation of this design which supports you to go through the whole progress. Another equally important step for designers is to pick up a desirable prototyping tool, such as Mockplus, from their toolkit. Articles about the introduction or comparison of wireframe/prototype tools are too many to recount. A comparison of software prototyping tools has been edited on Wikipedia, lots of tools listed. It goes without saying that the old giant, Axure, is included, and some other useful UI/UX tools could be found.
Abstractly, Axure has occupied and dominated most of the market share among the prototyping tools. It’s rather hard to say clearly why Axure becomes so popular. A most important, but also most elusive, aspect of any tool is its influence on the habits of those who train themselves in its use.
However, the truth is that designers nowadays are more open to accepting new simpler & easier tools, such as Mockplus who simplifies the process of conceptualizing, wireframing, prototyping and designing digital products.
“Design is about choices and intentions, it is not accidental. Design is about progress. The end user will usually not notice ‘the design of it’. It may seem like it just works, assuming they think about it at all, but this ease-of-use (or ease of understanding) is not by accident, it’s a result of your careful choices and decisions. ” — Garr Reynolds
Rapid & Simple Prototyping
In the year of 2016, it’s a blossoming stage for Mockplus, the modernistic prototyping tool. As it saying on Wikipedia, Mockplus is a rapid prototyping tool that devotes to simplify complexity on user interface design. Besides, Mockplus enables designers to focus on the design progress, rather than studying the tool usage for a very long time. By contrast, Axure is like an old man, walking teetering and slowly. And not only that, it costs a high learning curve to master. Taking advantage of it’s fast and simple design progress, Mockplus is catching-up.
At a glance of the Pros & Cons
Pros
1. Multi-Platform:
No matter a website or desktop & mobile application you intend to design, making a wireframe or prototype can be very easy and helpful. With Mockplus, there is no need to download multiple programs, as it is an all-in-one tool to help you build the wireframe or prototype for the major platform. In detail, it offers you multiple options of platform support which allowing you to create prototypes/wireframes for desktop-based websites, iOS & Android applications. It’s really a brilliant tool to visualize your elaborate ideas.
2. Extensive Components & Icons
Mockplus has a lot of components and icons that you can use to create your projects. With the 200 pre-designed components, Mockplus enables designers to work even faster and easier. The icon library has allocated a large number of 3,000 icons (including 2,600 SVG icons) to provide for designers. Adjustable settings such as the newest “TopBar+List+BottomBar” components can be helpful on creating App page easily and efficiently. Besides, a generous amount of markup components enables designers to add a markup on the prototype anywhere wanted. Any component can be set as markup. These components and icons prompt Mockplus to be an easy-to-use and rapid prototyping tool.
3.Strong support
Users come to the first. The Mockplus team offers a strong support for users, no matter you are the paid user or non-payer. Any question you ask, the team members will reply you a well-content answer as quickly as possible. If you have any problem or feedback about it, you can contact the team through the Customer Support Portal (support.jongde.com).
Cons
Interaction Components
Despite Mockplus is very rapid and simple at creating prototypes, but comparatively speaking, it is a little bit weak than other prototype/wireframe tool providers at interaction support. In order to achieve dynamic actions on the current Mockplus 2.0 version, it needs several steps to do that.
However, fortunately, the Mockplus team is well-known by agile development. In the 2.1 version, Mockplus endows with awesome interaction features which are very easy and simple to use. Create interactive prototypes by defining interactions in the Params Panel to set triggers, add Target and Commands. Various interaction modes you can choose freely to realize the effect what you intended. If you want to execute simultaneous actions, that is no problem, you only need to realize it with a single interaction. Broadly speaking, the practical interaction feature is very brilliant. Moreover, video tutorial and text tutorial about how to use the interaction feature both are available.
Conclusion
Mockplus provides a good choice for UI/UX designers to build prototypes/wireframes. If you are afraid you cannot design by Mockplus, for you are not a professional designer or without knowing about coding. Take it easy, Mockplus is suitable for anyone to complete a design work by himself. When the prototype finished, you can simply preview the project on your phone, or exporting to HTML document which can easily send to your client/manager before the final product is completed. Free version and the professional paid version both can be found on the website, just have a look and download to give it a try!
