A list of free and paid widget libraries is maintained on Axure’s website (see the “Resources” section below). To create a prototype of a native app for Android or iPhone, you can start by adding existing widget libraries to Axure. Use your website’s analytics software to find out what Android versions and handsets are the most popular among your users. If you must test on a user’s device (perhaps because you need access to native apps such as their address book), then test the prototype on a few different versions of Android while you are building it. But remember that it’s a testing prototype, so don’t worry about making it perfect. Because the pixel width of an Axure project is fixed, testing Android phones on a device that you control is easier because of all the different screen resolutions available. This size has displayed correctly on most newer Android phones that I’ve encountered in testing (and some BlackBerry and other devices as well). Your prototype will not always expand to fill the screen’s width when you flip the device from portrait to landscape orientation, so take that into account if your app will normally be used in landscape mode.įor Android phones, a width of 480 pixels usually works, although I often just create a single 320-pixel-wide version for mobile Web testing on both platforms. Because Axure is a WYSIWYG design tool, you can’t size pages by a percentage of the screen’s width, which would be ideal. And these widths will work on both Retina and non-Retina iOS displays. Because most mobile pages run longer than the height of the device’s screen, focusing on getting the width right is more important. If you’re targeting the iPhone, create a page that’s 320 × 480 pixels (or 1024 × 768 if you are designing for the iPad). Setting Up Your Projectįor a mobile website or app, just create the prototype’s pages in a smartphone-friendly width and height. The first thing you’ll need to do is create a new Axure file. Have a look at Axure’s own How to Avoid the Top 5 Mistakes When Starting to Use Axure RP. If you are new to Axure, start by learning some of the things you shouldn’t do, such as creating unnecessary text widgets and not naming your prototype’s objects. Microsoft SketchFlow (If you are in a.Balsamiq (Can be used to create clickable wireframes.).I run Axure on a MacBook Pro at work and on an iMac in my home office. Axure costs $589 per user license, which allows you to install it on two computers. If you aren’t familiar with it, Axure RP is a rapid prototyping tool that runs on Mac and Windows and can be used to create interactive prototypes for desktop websites and mobile products without writing any code. I created this sample prototype recently for an event about design tools run by our local IxDA chapter, but I approached it the way I would in an actual working situation. In this article, I’ll show you how I used Axure RP 6.5 to prototype a theoretical iPhone app for the Chicago chapter of the Interaction Design Association (IxDA). It’s a low-cost activity that saves you time and substantial expense over the life of a design project. The point is to design quickly, test it, fail fast and learn something. The best testing prototype has only what you need for your purpose and not a single thing more. It isn’t meant to be a fully functioning entity with live data connections, although sometimes it can be. A prototype is a design artifact for end-user testing and for communicating functionality to business and development stakeholders. First of all, let’s define what a prototype is and is not.
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