iPhone App Prototyping in Director
Posted in Latest, Thoughts, Tim Portfolio, Work - November 19, 2009 - tim
The question constantly comes up on iPhone developer forums: what’s the best way to prototype an iPhone app concept without heading straight to Objective C?
There are great arguments for all of the traditional forms of rapid prototyping: paper, Visio, Photoshop layer comps, XHTML mockups, etc. But the two methods we’ve come to use more of over time are not the most obvious – certainly not the easiest.
As discussed in a previous post (here) we use Keynote (on the Mac) a lot for wireframe and rough prototype development. What’s key is the ability to work at pixel-perfect scale (to the target environment) and (as with Viso and other layered environments) to “page” through comps with perfect image registration. Unlike Viso (and Omnigraffle) I find Keynote much easier to organize and craft into everything from high-gloss presentations and walk-throughs for clients to hard-core detailed wireframe specs (pixel-registry) for designers and developers. Decks can be output in everything from Powerpoint to Quicktime to XHTML to PDF.
The other rather unexpected tool we use – especially for high-impact conceptual presentations – is Director. I’m a Director hack from way back and just can’t give up on it although Flash has largely eclipsed it these days. We’ve created iPhone (and other app) presentations that look and feel damn near like the final product – including interactivity, beautiful UI animation, pixel-perfect resolution, etc. We’ve even built into presentations the ability to trigger environmental conditions such as orientation, shaking, voice/audio input, etc. to demonstrate app response (see above comp).
This takes a bit of work, but the results can be outstanding. Since it’s so true that the later in a production process you change design, the more expensive it is, I feel like it is often justified – especially if you’re doing something new or weird – to comp up as realistic an experience of a proposed app as you can. Director does this in spades (using the same assets – usually out of Photoshop – that are going to go into the app anyway) as early in the process as you want.
It ultimately boils down to best tool for the job. I’m the first to admit that when starting a new UX project the first couple of hours are actually on the deck with a big pad of paper and a beer. But when you need to start getting others on board – product managers, investors, partners, designers, developers – the extra effort in prototyping / visualization using one of these tools usually pays off handsomely.
