
Current Trends of Prototyping Tools
Say that oh-so-familiar phrase: product design. This phrase has tons of buzz revolving around it especially recently.
To many the expression “Product design” is an umbrella term referring to the creation of UI elements. But as you dive a bit deeper, you hit the idea that product design embraces the whole process of product creation. In fact, I refer to the PO+Designer team as a product team.
Despite my young age, I‘ve had the honor to see the UX design trends form themselves and emerge into what UX covers now. First Apple made the mobile era boom, and the seeds of responsive design formed and gained popularity. Adobe, that used to be a long term monopolist in design tools started to get complemented by smaller startups adding a lot of value to the design process. Finding and forming great fonts and icons has ceased being a time-consuming activity, as both became available online at large scales.
I am also very glad that the designers nowadays don’t have to limit themselves to creating neat pixel-perfect UIs. Design includes more and more scientific basis, while not cutting on the creativity. Modern tools allow to make the research and usability testing much more efficient. It has moved from providing icons and wireframes to communicating the work with users with the help of the tools, some of which will be featured in the article.
The tools are quite differentiated according to the needs. Some are more advanced on exporting features, others have many useful plugins available and so on. Speed, price and accuracy: these are majorly covered by various tools, which leaves a large list of options to choose from. I hope that this article will be helpful with that.
Prototyping?
You may ask: Prototype? Why bother? Well, I hope you don’t. Because prototyping is a great shortcut to many costly parts of the design and development process. It is a quick method for idea validation and on-the-spot usability testing.
It is also irreplaceable from the product’s point of view. You may look at the screen for ages and still get that feeling that something is just not right. Put it into a prototype, add the transitions, go through the imagined user flow and there you are: most probably you know what exactly needs to be changed and why. And this is way before you have spent hours on developing the feature.
What’s there to choose from?

It is not as easy as it sounds.
Most probably you will still need to do proper research before choosing the right tool for prototyping. Depending on your needs and requirements, you might want to use a specific tool specialized on solving the problematic area for you. When I work on one of the projects for SFL, I tend to ask myself the following questions:
Who’s the target audience of the prototype? Is it for the client? Development team? End-users?
This will help you choose from the various sharing options, as well as the integration of usability testing.
What is the scope of the project? What are the deadlines?
This will define whether or not you will have time to concentrate on transitions and microinteractions.
Who should contribute to the prototype? Am I working on it alone?
Various prototyping tools allow team collaboration on the project. There are also multiple sharing options to choose from.
I suggest going over the following flow by Taylor Palmer to shortlist the tools:
Last minute Advice:
- Don’t limit yourself to something you’re already used to. Try new things, it will not be very time consuming as most tools are very easy to use right away. On the other hand, the privileges are countless.
- Take the most of plugins. Sometimes a prototype is just a click away from your Sketch file. For example, with Craft and Silver Flows, you will be able to create a full-functioning InVision prototype with transitions right inside Sketch.
- Gathering information early on is the best. Show your prototype to your coworkers, friends and relatives. There’s never too much of user testing.
- Still didn’t get hold of the design of your product? Start writing user stories early on. Dropping the design down to the functionality makes you own it even stronger and shows you all the possible gaps and scenarios way in advance.
In a nutshell, being a product designer is even cooler today, with these tools to back you up and spare all the dirty job. Maybe the time will come when we won’t even need any comparison between tools, as there will be that one perfect app leading on each stage of wireframing (from paper to the final actionable product). Given the number of mergers and acquisitions happening in the sphere, that’s not as unlikely as it sounds. Meanwhile let’s enjoy the comfort of plugins and just have fun as we design the future flagmen!
About this author:
Diana Melkumyan is an Agile Product Owner, a UI/UX enthusiast and a proud bookworm who finds happiness in improving things

