I currently use Visio (along with the excellent GUUUI Web Prototyping Tool and my own templates) to produce wireframes. I know Visio is frowned upon a bit by the UX community, but I find that its easy to ease and not fiddly to produce a wire that looks professional.
However, Visio is a bit old school and as such I’ve been looking at a number of online wireframing tools over the last month or so.
Tools I’ve looked at so far are:
- Balsamiq
- Gliffy
- Jumpchart
- iPlotz
- Mockflow
- Pidoco
- Hot gloo
- Protoshare (though very briefly as there wasn’t a free trial).
I’ve compiled a features comparison while reviewing these, which I’d thought I’d share… you can find it in the embedded Google doc below (hopefully the column headings make sense):
What’s missing?
Overall I’m a bit underwhelmed and feel they are all missing a trick… I was expecting something a bit more than just “Visio, but online”. It feels like these tools really aren’t capturing the benefit of being online.
Feature’s I’d love to see are:
- Push to user testing – how about signing a deal with usertesting.com so that tests can be done at a click of a button?
- Integrated with other tools – Having a tool that that produces wires is great, but how about proper sitemapping, card sorting and integration of other outputs / tools?
- Client requirements / research gathering – ability to include surveys that clients / users would be great.
- Client signoff / approval - once wires are produced, it would be good to have a getsignoff.com type process embedded in the app.
- More output options – most export as PDFs or Jpegs. How about HTML? or Flash? or even other software like Visio?
- Professional / own branded output – The output produced simply isn’t good enough to present to our clients. Having the ability to add our logo / brand colours etc. is a must.
- Elegant interface – none of the interfaces feel elegant (they almost feel like clunky legacy software)
- Video playback – would be nice to record journeys and play back… how awesome would that be for user testing?
What am I going to use
For the time being I’m going to stick with Visio as there isn’t enough benefit for me yet in switching, but I’ll definitly be keeping an eye on some of the tools I’ve reviewed.
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8 Responses to “Online wireframing tools comparison… and what’s missing!”
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Thanks for the fantastic grid & reviews. Much more useful than the recent UX booth article. I currently still use Visio, GUUUI tools, and my own templates – just still seems too slow and fidgity. Doesn’t sound like there’s much reason to change though.
Thanks for the comment Angel… glad to hear that you found the grid useful!
Hello Paul,
Thank you for including Pidoco in your review.
I’d like to mention that we have HTML and Word export (you can brand Word files yourself really easily). We also have our own usability module with video recording and playback. But the best part is that we recently released the first version of our API, which allows our users to access Pidoco prototypes and discussions with project management tools (for example, we offer a plug-in for Redmine).
I hope this information helps you, and thanks again!
Best regards,
Tino Truppel
http://www.pidoco.com/en
Hey there – nice work on this!
One feature category that would be helpful is “interactivity” or something to that effect… basically, can you set up events / interactions? As in, click a button and have a non-modal dialog box pop up… simulate a logged in status by creating a login box that when submitted shows a “logged in state” and retain that state across all pages.
I’ve been using MS PowerPoint (crazy I know but give a try sometime) because you can use its “Animations” feature to set up these kind of interactions… the drawback is that things get really complex, really fast and that elements can’t retain their state from page to page.
Anyway, I took a swing at using Hot Gloo but as powerful a tool as it is, I ran into some hard dead-ends (empty layers block click-able areas for one – so you can’t do things like show a pop up dialog on top of a button).
Hi Paul,
Great feedback on many of the various wireframing / prototyping apps available. There is certainly a lot of information in trying to find the right tool for you – and why make the final switch if the available tools still do not accomplish quite what you want them to?
I would like to contact you individually regarding ProtoShare and the problems you have encountered, as well as your wishlist of items. I am interested on gaining more insight to your thoughts.
I will address a couple of points here though. ProtoShare does offer a 30-day free trial for all our plans, but we do require a credit card to ensure a smooth transition to a subscription plan. We do send out reminder emails during your trial period and allow you to cancel at any time.
Besides exporting specifications to Word, you can export the prototype to HTML. We also offer the ability for white labeling to brand the application to your company.
@Bobby Fever: ProtoShare also enables high fidelity “interactivity” as you put it. You have the ability to apply states to create pop-ups, carousels, and more.
We are continually updating our application so welcome feedback. I look forward to speaking with you.
Cheers,
Andrea
@ProtoShare
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