- Framer 116 – Prototyping Tool For Testing Interactivity Tool
- Web Prototyping Tool
- Free Prototyping Tools
- Free Prototyping Tools For Windows
- Whether you bring over designs from Figma, Sketch, or decide to start from scratch, Framer is the best tool for interactive prototyping. Sign up for free Framer.
- Framer lets you start with simple code to bring your design to life. Test it on any device, iterate as you go and share easily for feedback. Pioneer new interaction patterns or create groundbreaking animation. No limits, no constraints.Features Code has never been this easy. Auto-Code makes s.
Mar 21, 2018 Framer lets you start with simple code to bring your design to life. Test it on any device, iterate as you go and share easily for feedback. Pioneer new interaction patterns or create groundbreaking animation. No limits, no constraints.Features Code has never been this easy. Auto-Code makes s. Framer Studio is a prototyping application for Mac, but Framer.js only needs Safari or Chrome. No dragging and dropping, pushing buttons, or connecting dots here — in Framer you will have to code.
Prototyping tools enable designers to weave visuals, navigational elements, and interactions together to give a solid representation of how a design will behave and feel.
13 prototyping tools for UI/UX designers
Prototypes are an opportunity to try things out and fine-tune the details, and they’re an essential tool in communicating to decision makers how all of the elements will function together.
Here are 13 prototyping tools to help you with your own design process:
1. Figma
Figma is an all-in-one tool that makes collaboration and accessibility easy for UX designers, developers, and anyone else on a team with a browser-based, cloud-hosted platform. If you’ve worked with Sketch before, you’ll find that Figma has a similar feel that makes it easy to get started with.
Consistency is a priority in web design, and you can use Figma’s flexible styles to control the appearance of text, grids, and other elements across a project. And a variety of useful plugins, like Autoflow for illustrating flows, Figmotion for creating animations, and many others, enhance Figma’s functionality.
2. InVision Studio
Released in 2011, InVision has a well-established reputation, and their dedication to rolling out new functionality and adding to their design platform makes them a favorite among many designers.
With a host of well-designed tools, InVision gives designers the power to put together functional prototypes quickly and to share them with others. It offers so many nice features, including a handy vector drawing tool, repeatable components that can be changed sitewide, and tools for creating animations and other dynamic visual effects.
Collaboration and communication are also strengths of InVision. Freehand lets team members draw, add notes, and offer feedback. And through LiveShare, a prototype can be demonstrated with full interactivity. InVision makes it easy for team members to stay connected and work together throughout the course of a project.
3. Adobe XD
Adobe XD offers a vector-based system for putting together prototypes, including tools for creating interactions, transitions, and other types of dynamic functionality. Because it’s vector based, scaling and resizing elements is no problem.
Adobe XD work well alongside other Adobe family apps like Illustrator and Photoshop. It’s nice to be able to edit Adobe images, like a .psd, right in the application.
Adobe XD covers all the tools a designer needs from conceptualization through high-resolution prototypes. And they’re continually adding to this product with monthly updates that expand its functionality.
4. Webflow
As you may have noticed, we are Webflow. We know that you want a smoother and faster design process, and we're here to help you out.
Webflow takes care of two jobs at once. While you’re designing and building a high-fidelity prototype, you’re creating a live website that’s complete with all of the HTML, CSS, and associated JavaScript. You don’t end up with just a mockup — you’ll have the real deal.
With an intuitive drag-and-drop interface, a powerful CMS, and the capability to create advanced animations, transitions, and microinteractions, Webflow makes it possible to create any type of professional-level website.
If you want a speedy way to design and prototype, Webflow gives you what you need, all without knowing how to code, making it one of the best prototyping tools whatever your skill level.
5. Axure RP 9
Axure RP 9 puts the power of wireframing and prototyping all in one package. It allows designers to create low to high resolution interactive prototypes of websites and apps, all without having to code.
Along with what you need to build the visuals, interactivity, and organization, Axure RP 9 also offers a comprehensive documentation tool, which makes keeping track of notes, tasks, and other important assets organized and accessible to those who need to see it.
Axure RP 9 also facilitates a better handoff to developers by letting a prototype be published on their cloud, with all of the code, specifications, and other assets they would need to build it.
Built for professionals, with attention to all of the intricacies of building functional prototypes, Axure RP 9 is for those designers who demand more from their prototyping tools.
6. Origami Studio
If you’re Facebook and your designers don’t have an app that they need, you build it for them. Origami Studio was created for Facebook designers out of necessity, and Facebook so graciously shared it with the rest of the design world.
For designers who need a more advanced system, Origami Studio offers powerful prototyping tools for websites and mobile apps. Central to Origami Studio is a patch editor that lets you build logic, behaviors, animations, and interactions. It comes with many prebuilt patches, and the site says you’ll most likely use just 15–20 of these for most of your prototyping work.
Origami Studio does have a bit of a learning curve that can be daunting at first. But the payoff of knowing how to use their prototyping tools and pulling off sophisticated prototypes makes it well worth learning. This power, along with its compatibility in working with Sketch, makes Origami Studio an important tool for designers who want to go above and beyond standard prototyping.
7. Justinmind
Justinmind has been gathering momentum as a popular prototyping tool. There are quite a few reasons why, from drag-and-drop functionality, the capabilities to create the simplest to most sophisticated of apps and web prototypes, and plenty of support, like videos and blogs to help you learn how to use it. Justinmind isn’t as huge as some of the other prototyping tools out there, but they’re certainly an up-and-comer.
Framer 116 – Prototyping Tool For Testing Interactivity Tool
Justinmind comes with UI libraries and templates, as well as many other practical features. It lets you create the logic for conditional navigation, allows for user testing, facilitates design team management, and more. There’s also a number of integrations that let you use Justinmind with Sketch, Adobe Suite, Azure DevOps Server, and Jira in your workflow.
Its simple interface makes it a great starting point for a beginner UX designer but also offers enough for more advanced designers.
Build complex interactions and animations without even looking at code.
8. Sketch
So many UX designers use Sketch as a part of their workflow — and for good reason.
Uniformity and consistency drive much of Sketch’s functionality. Reusable elements can be used sitewide with a smart layout feature that changes their dimensions depending on what content is inside of them. Then there’s the ease of use. Along with a well-designed user interface, Sketch offers a host of shortcuts at your fingertips to speed up the design process.
Many consider Sketch an industry standard when it comes to prototyping, and its feature-packed and user-friendly interface are just a few reasons why so many designers choose it.
9. Fluid UI
Fluid UI’s software makes for lightning-fast prototyping. With ready-made libraries for material design, iOs, and Windows, as well as gestures, Fluid UI gives you so much to get started with. And their simple user interface makes it super easy to put these components together.
10. Framer
Framer is a design tool that lets you build interactive prototypes extremely fast. With Framer, you can create completely functional prototypes — everything from linking pages together to creating 3D effects.
Framer also has thousands of resources in the Framer X Store. You have access to everything from live maps, UI kits, and media players all at your fingertips.
11. Marvel
Do you need a prototyping tool that will let you whip up apps and websites quickly? And do it for free? Marvel gives you a complete suite of prototyping tools, without skimping on functionality.
Marvel lets you go beyond static mockups and offers interactivity, dynamic transitions, and gestures to bring prototypes to life and give a real user experience to anyone testing them out. Another nice addition is the handoff tool that gives developers all of the code and assets in their most current iteration to dive in and create a live website, automatically.
Marvel’s collaborative features let anyone on a design team — no matter how spread out, or whatever the stage of production — add notes, make changes, and share ideas in real time.
12. Proto.io
ESPN, Amazon, and PayPal are just a few of the big names that have used Proto.io. With a comprehensive selection of components and tools, interactive prototypes are made possible without having to type in a single line of code.
Within its web-based editor, Proto.io gives you a variety of drag-and-drop UI web components, templates, icon libraries, and audio and video integrations. You can also bring in anything you have created on your own in Photoshop or Sketch.
With an array of templates, tools, and other components to build prototypes, Proto.io has so much to offer.
13. Principle
Principle lets you create dazzling interactions and eye-catching animations, giving you prototypes that go beyond dull static representations.
With multiple artboards, a timeline-based animation builder, and the ability to import Figma frames, Principle allows you to design an impressive app or web design in a short amount of time.
With an attention to motion and interactivity, Principle stands out among the other prototyping apps out there.
Prototyping leads to a better design process
For large-scale projects with many moving parts, prototyping is indispensable. Prototypes let you gather feedback, test usability, and tweak a design along the way.
There are many tools out there to help you, starting with these 13 more widely adopted apps. What’s your favorite prototyping tool? Just let us know in the comments below!
Related reads:7 simple steps to the web design process
A wireframe is the primitive skeleton of your website. It’s not glamorous or cutting edge, but it holds everything together. Without that skeletal structure, even the best-looking website is nothing more than a blob of cyber-goo, impossible to navigate through.
Designers too often begin with an exact idea of the end product (because making a cool-looking site is fun!), but a good website must be built on the proper framework. And a good tool to understand the website framework is a wireframe, which is why many designers and UX pros begin their website design process with a wireframe. The wireframing stage generally focuses on
- Page layout
- Interface elements
- Navigational systems
- Functionality
Why should I test my wireframes?
Your designers and programmers are probably eager to bring your wireframe to life. But if you value them (and your customers), you need to hold them back for a little while. Why? Because you don’t want to waste time and effort. Frank Lloyd Wright makes the point well: “You can use an eraser on the drafting table or a sledgehammer on the construction site.” If you want to deliver the best product in the shortest amount of time, the wireframing stage is one of your most valuable stages for usability testing. So what would you actually test when users can see only a skeleton of your site or app? Plenty.
What should I ask users when they’re testing my wireframe?
Since wireframes focus primarily on navigation and layout, develop tasks that help you analyze these elements of your site.
- Where would you find [x]? (test items from different navigation areas, such as top-level items, second-level items, header and footer items, etc.)
- If you could move one element on this page, what would you move, and where?
- What is this site about?
- What would you like to see differently?
- Think of 3 things you’d want to find on this page, and find them. Which was the most difficult to find?
- What features are missing?
- Perform A/B testing of image placement.
Sample wireframing tools
There are a number of different tools for wireframing that range from simple chart and diagramming software to programs with extensive widget and component libraries.
Here are some of the most popular programs to choose from:
Axure
Axure is a desktop app that runs on Windows and Mac. It has an impressive array of features as well as a complimentary cloud prototyping service.
Balsamiq
Balsamiq is the classic wireframing tool. It is a firm believer in the “rough sketch” nature of wireframing. Online and offline versions available.
Cacoo
Cacoo is a user friendly online drawing tool that allows you to create a variety of diagrams such as site maps, wireframes, UML and network charts.
FlairBuilder
FlairBuilder is a program that begins with wireframes and lets you incorporate rich prototype features in later phases.
Gliffy
Gliffy is specifically a web-based diagram editor. It is primarily used for flowcharts, networks and floor plans, but can also be used for basic wireframing.
HotGloo
Hot Gloo’s straightforward interface and ease of use make it a great option for beginning the wireframe process and a fantastic introductory tool.
iPlotz
iPlotz specifically focuses on website wireframing. It is not a generic flowchart program. If you’re looking to do a simple wireframe for your site, that’s their game.
LovelyCharts
Lovely Charts is an online diagramming application that allows you to create professional looking diagrams, such as flowcharts, sitemaps and organization charts.
LucidChart
Make a flow chart, org chart, mind map, network diagram, UML diagram, wireframe and other drawings online with Lucidchart's free flow chart creator.
MockFlow
Mockflow is an online wireframing tool for software and websites. It provides a collection of collaborative web services for creative designers and usability experts.
Mockingbird
Mockingbird is an online tool that makes it easy for you to create, link together, preview, and share mockups of your website or application.
MockupBuilder
MockupBuilder helps you quickly get your ideas on screen. It is a FREE Silverlight powered web app.
MockupTiger
MockupTiger is easy. It has drag and drop features and vector widgets and icons so you can customize them on your own.
OmniGraffle
At the root of OmniGraffle are stencils. Create wireframes, flowcharts and mobile apps. You can also download a number of additional stencil packs.
Pencil Project
Pencil Project is free and easy to learn. It can run as a Firefox add-on or on its own.
PowerMockup
PowerMockup enables you to turn PowerPoint into a website wireframe tool. Netspot pro 2 12 1006 trailer tires. There are a number of templates available for download.
Simulify
Simulify is extremely basic, quick and easy. It runs in editor and preview mode.
Wireframe Sketcher
Wireframe Sketcher is for conceptual design. It has limited hyperlink interactivity.
User testing your wireframes
Once your wireframe is ready, post a link to it on UserTesting where you can:
Web Prototyping Tool
- Customize the demographics of your test group.
- Create specific test questions and tasks for each user to complete.
- Assign specific written questions for each user to answer.
What do you get out of it?
Free Prototyping Tools
- A video of each user’s screen testing your wireframe.
- Audio of the user talking through how he completes the tasks.
- Valuable feedback about how to improve your website.
- A website that everyday people can use easily!
Free Prototyping Tools For Windows
View our infographic on wireframing, protoyping, and simulating tools.