Posted by Rob
Posted on 12-11-2009 under Client Education, Design, Experience Design

Every once in a while, there are breakthroughs that are revolutionary in their simplicity and focus.   Twitter is an example that comes to mind.  For me and in my work, Balsamiq Mockups is just such a breakthrough.

In the world of User Experience Design, there has been some really interesting research and publication on the importance and immense value of sketching in the web and application design process (for more on this, I recommend Bill Buxton’s life-changing book Sketching User Experiences).  People, it seems, have a different psychological reaction to sketches during the concept development and experience design process.  When something seems quick and rough, people collaborate and think.  When presented with ideas that are too fully formed, people will approach them as being complete ideas, and as such will make black or white decisions about them.

We have definitely seen this happen many times in web and interface design - present a client with a really nice looking design comp, and instead of thinking about how the navigation is working or if the site will lead to greater sales conversion or anything else important like that, they will make gut reactions based on your color scheme or your choice of placeholder images.  This is very counterproductive and leads to lots of wasted time and sometimes real customer service issues.

Additionally, as designers, we sometimes have a tendency to think we know the answers, and tend to pride ourselves on our problem-solving abilities.  I can’t tell you how many times I have heard designers, when asked what it is that they do, and respond “I solve problems.” This is huge pitfall, because it assumes we know what the problems are to start with.  Pulling away from our polished, pretty world and getting down and dirty with sketches and thumbnails can afford a lot more freedom in thought, and helps approach each project with a freshness and humble clarity.

What Balsamiq Mockups does is provide a bit of a shortcut in the sketching process - it gives you tons of pre-drawn controls and interface elements, and allows you to “sketch” ideas without using paper and pencil.  You can even link multiple pages together, so that you have a working, clickable, interactive sketch.  Your sketching becomes faster and more interactive, but retains the desired level of incompleteness necessary to get people understanding that they are not looking at a finished design concept.

I would be remiss if my love letter didn’t include a couple of minor frustrations.  Most notably for me, you cannot export a clickable, multipage mockup in any sort of packaged format (it would be awesome if it could generate a little Flash or Air file of your mockup).  There are a few other little quirks, mostly having to do with the Air runtime environment (yes, I know that’s like saying “ATM Machine” :-p ).  The software is very much in continuous development, and so new features are being added all the time, but the upgrade process is a bit clunky.

EDIT: The upgrade “clunkyness” is an Air thing - I meant this comment in comparison to regular desktop apps that have upgrading functionality built in.

Those are all nitpicks, though.  This is great software, and will make you a better designer, hands down.  You can try it out for free on their site. Do it!