Last month, I had a survey on the prototype tools for iOS app, and hope can help designers. It still needs the actual usage of these tools to choose appropriate one for us.

1. Mac tools

1). Fully use keynote templete and action effect, called “keynotepia”, the link

Required the skills about usage of Keynote.

2). Prototypes. Drag the interface photos from local folder, defines the hot field and interface transmission.

2. iPad tools

1)”Bluepirnt” is iPad tool like storyboard, synchronising with Dropbox and iTune sharing. Can export the transition of all screen as pdf document.

iPad has small screen, and has to download the design images to iPad.

2) “App Cooker” is pretty good tool not only for making mockup , but also for price plan of iOS app.

3)”Interface 2″, similar to “Blue print”.

3. iPhone app

1). “Mockabilly” is an iPhone application provides the ftp interface, enable to transfer the designed photos from mac to iPhone.  Define the hot field for transmission. Easy to use, but require a lot of   screens to show complex action.

2). “Dapp” can provide the source code generation source

4. web tools(using java script)

1).  http://proto.io/, provides good tool to design in the website and can show in the device, pretty good, but lack of rich content.

2). “Codiqa” is web based prototype tool. Can provide a lot of templates for developers, like iOS, android, it uses the JQuery library.

After tried some of these softwares for short time, I found that if we just want to build a simple prototype, which uses the standard components, the “Blue print” is enough, and can almost build normal app.  For the customised effect, we need more advanced tools for build the prototype.

Reference:

1. Great iPad Tools for Designing Apps
2. What are the prototyping tools for mobile apps for user experience professionals?
3.  StoryboardTools
4. Prototyping tools for iOS app design: Part 5 – Applications
5. Review of Blueprint for iPad – the best prototyping tool