The creative process to design an efficient interface and user experience is crucial in a Mobile Application Development project, since important variables depend on it, such as the adoption rate of end-users, as well as the general satisfaction index.
For this reason, software development companies place a lot of emphasis on optimizing the design and approval process, validating all proposals before starting the development phase, which is the one that consumes the most resources; resorting then to the use of tools such as the Interactive Prototype.
Today, there are many tools that provide the opportunity to review all phases of a project, stimulate feedback among team members, and not least: it gives us a fairly clear idea of what the project experience will be like. user.
Taking into account the importance of this phase in a development project, we have compiled the best tools to make an interactive prototype:
Flinto
It is an application produced for MacOS, widely recognized and used by the most demanding designers to create interactive and animated prototypes in software development. Among its main functionalities, we could name the following:
- Animated transitions:Flinto has an excellent transition designer that allows you to create your own animated transitions in a very simple way. You do not need to schedule, or schedule, the transition designer is quite intuitive, you just have to place any element where you want and it will be ready.
- Various behaviors: With the behavior designer you can create micro-interactions within the screens, a perfect function if you want to add loop animations, buttons, scrolling animations or switches.
- Scrolling feature: You can add scrollable areas with just one click and also create amazing animations based on the scrolling found in the behavior designer.
- Drawing Resources: excellent drawing tools that will allow you to design simple models to your liking or edit texts and shapes inserted from Sketch. You can even make animations of vector curves.
Learn more about Flinto on their website.
JustInMind:
It is a fairly intuitive and dynamic tool for creating prototypes “all in one” recommended for applications and web pages, with it you can review from wireframes to highly interactive prototypes.
JustInMind will allow you to start a project from the beginning, for example, go from clickable wireframes to 100% interactive prototypes in order to have a very broad idea of mobile gestures, online interactions, making the UX / UI work easier. Among its main functionalities are:
- Efficient design: with this tool you can choose the size, style and distribution of all kinds of elements in the user interface in order to adjust it to the appearance of your screens.
- Online interactions: You have the possibility to design web experiences through a wide catalog of interactions and animations, ranging from simple links to increasingly complex interactions.
- Infinity of mobile gestures: You can choose from a wide variety of gestures that will allow you to slide, move, touch, rotate and even pinch the prototype of your mobile application.
- Liquid design: defines liquid containers thanks to which the elements of a page will be able to adapt without problems to the different screen sizes, aspect ratios and orientations.
- Automatic size adjustment: It will allow you to instinctively change the size of the groups of elements on each page, saving multiple changes in the software design and giving a real space for creation.
- Featured Object Attachment: This feature enables object retention in containers or displays, a feature that combined with free movement provides more responsive experiences.
Want to know more about JustInMind? Check their official site.
InVision
This tool gives you the facility to share and comment on a project live with the client, making it an excellent strategy to manage and streamline times and processes.
You can also manage the versions of your projects by synchronizing Illustrator or Photoshop with the app, preventing you from getting lost in a maze of folders and layers of various files. Some of its features include:
- Presence of click and over-click: You can choose between click or scroll access points to indicate what are the user flows in the prototype.
- Access points to other windows: InVision enables you to configure links that link to other screens in your prototype, external URL style, anchor points, quick access and more.
- Template design: thinking about those recurring elements such as menus, this function enables you to configure templates with access points for this type of need and apply them globally to the prototype through a click.
- Gesture Inclusion and Transitions: Gestures like double tap and swipe can be added to show interactions in the prototype and enhance the user experience in real life.
- Various interactions and animations: Introduce animations such as pulling down or to the right to reveal the interaction capacity of your prototype.
Check Invision website to know more about their tool.
Are you not clear about the benefits of making an Interactive Prototype? We let you know in our blog post “Benefits of making an interactive prototype“.
Fluid UI
Ideas can be prototyped in no time thanks to Fluid UI, and not only that, it is possible to share, collaborate and feed back with the opinion of your team, recommended for small applications.
Design the layout of the primary views of your app linking each view to controls that connect with others, giving way to a more interactive, dynamic and representative demonstration of the final result. Its main characteristics are:
- Effective prototyping: it has a fairly complete and pre-built user interface kit to design materials, Wireframing, iOS, among others.
- Collaboration in real time: provides the possibility for the entire team to work simultaneously on the same prototype.
- Dynamic previews: Adding interactions to your prototype will be more fun, efficient and productive thanks to the visual linking function.
- High and low fidelity: Fluid UI is compatible with any style you require, regardless of whether it is a high or low fidelity prototype.
- Access from any device: it is possible to access the prototypes in the desktop app or by logging on to the Internet, without any problem.
- Mobile testing available: With Fluid UI you can test your prototypes on various mobile devices, such as phones or tablets, through free playback apps.
For more information about Fluid UI, visit their website: https://www.fluidui.com/
Proto.io:
Perhaps its most outstanding feature is the inclusion of an engine that allows you to create animations for mobile applications through a timeline that will determine how long the animation will last. Other of its functionalities are:
- Easy drag and drop action: Special for moving files from the desktop directly to the panel for quick loading, making it easier for you to find all your assets.
- Masking Tool: Mask, crop, frame or create animations without leaving the Proto.io editor.
- Various animations available: They include scale, move, rotate, resize and fade and can be applied to any element.
- Actions: With an extensive series of actions, you can navigate, use logic, control emails, GIFs, audios, videos, switch screens, make a call, visit a URL and more.
- Export as HTML: Ideal for previewing and storing the project even offline, as well as for downloading all Javascript, CCS, and HTML files plus all project assets.
At https://proto.io/ you will have the opportunity to know all the details of this tool.
Summary
The good user experience is becoming an end rather than a means thanks to the weight it has on companies achieving their business objectives.
A satisfied user is not only more likely to use our application more, increasing the possibilities of monetization, but also tends to recommend it more, allowing more users to be reached without investing so many resources in marketing and recommendation.
If you want to know more about our development services, we invite you to visit our Mobile Development page.