Balsamiq Mockups

Following on from last week's paper exercise we now get to create some working wire frames using Balsamiq. Balsamiq is a pretty good tool for doing this and can now export pdfs with links between mockups -which gives you a prototype you can drive. The only downside is that it's expensive for just playing around with, at $12 / month, although it's cheaper if you download the tool -or use the GoogleDrive plugin.




This is a minimal working version of the app -enough to allow uploading, storage and retrieval. Although I didn't carry out the heuristic exercise -maybe at the next meeting of the Likely Lads- I did find a few obvious holes, such as the lack of a home screen. In addition when designing this I noticed some inconsistencies in the interface that I will need to go back and fix.

Following Sam's feedback on the navigation, the usual Android nav. is 'assumed' -which means I was too lazy to link up the back button and the home button, I also forgot to link up the trash.

On the choice of icons vs. a one liner list, I decided that I could get more icons on the small phone home screen. In the actual app the home screen would preferentially display a category of items that the user picks, and perhaps the actual icon could change based on a primary tag?

In the real world I'd probably do both and A/B test, or have it configurable.