4 ms·

Balsamiq - Software and Website Mockup App

62 points by tortilla 18y ago

nirmal 18y ago
What's the rational behind having some of the mockup bits be resizable and others fixed? The calendar and button bar are fixed while individual buttons are resizable.
JimEngland 18y ago
I think this would be more useful if the items looked realistic, and were not crude hand drawn graphics. If I want something hand drawn, I'll do it myself on a piece of paper.
- tortilla 18y ago
  I agree and disagree. They probably don't want you to focus too much on the actual design during early prototyping. But they could have made it a bit more polished and still kept it bare. Another benefit of this app is you can easily share your work (I know you can scan your sketches). But a negative is you can't really interact with it or make comments (Balsamiq).
- yankees1 18y ago
  Disagree also. I enjoy the hand drawn graphics. The ability to resize, rename, color, and place easily within Mockups is anything but crude. The adjective I've used in describing Mockups is elegant.
- Angostura 18y ago
  ...and if you did it yourself on a bit of paper you would probably end up having to scan it in. I think the look is excellent. It makes explicit to the client or whoever that this is a mock-up and not to be confused with the look and feel of the app/site. You can say that until you are blue in the face and quite often someone will say 'isn't that line a bit thick'. Moreover sometimes designers can get locked into overly prescriptive design rough too early. This avoids that.
- webwright 18y ago
  Yaw, as a guy who has done a lot of UI consulting I can tell you this-- the more crude your mockup is, the more the viewer focuses on layout rather than design. Crudity like this will keep people from saying, "what if we had rounded corners there?"
snprbob86 18y ago
I'm partial to whiteboards for early mockups and tablets for digitizing more final mockups. I don't really see much value in using a tool like this for early mockups. You might as well use a real designer like Visual Studio, Flex, Blend, etc. and go to prototype stage if you are going to spend that much effort laying out controls.
mmelin 18y ago
You really should make the first page have a more obvious "buy now"-button. It took me a while to figure out that I had to go to an individual edition of the app (JIRA, Confluence, Desktop) to get a price.
- wmeredith 18y ago
  I concur. I spent about 5 minutes on the site and didn't even know it was a purchasable product until i came back here and read the comments.
  - balsamiq 18y ago
    Hi. I updated the site to add more "buy" links. Hopefully it will help some.
Mistone 18y ago
i really like the idea/concept of the app, I've used iRise to do mockups and specs and was really impressed but the high price tag per license is geared to enterprise users so once my trial ended I was done. I always thought this would make a great web app with a subscription model, that would be very helpful to a huge small biz/consumer audience. not sure if balsamiq fits the bill but def excited about testing it out.
augustus 18y ago
I recently looked at a lot of mockup sites to design my site but none of them were easy and simple. I finally decided to just create a bare bones html site. I also remember seeing a canadian site a while back that helped in prototyping websites (can't remember name) but they too were too difficult to use.
railsjedi 18y ago
The demo version is pathetically useless. Stops after 5 minutes, and you cant save anything. A 30 day trial would be useful. Most people arent about to drop 80 bucks on an app after only using it for 5 minutes. Any have any alternatives? I've used Axure for a while. It works well, but the aesthetics aren't great (meaning.. its ugly). Plus it only works on windows, so I have to use it through Fusion. EDIT... disregard this comment...
- balsamiq 18y ago
  Hi. You can dismiss the nagging dialog and keep working for as long as you'd like. And you can export the mockup as XML and save it into a text file if you want. I'll make the text in that dialog more clear.
  - railsjedi 18y ago
    Ah, thanks for the note. I'll keep using it. Like what I see so far!
balsamiq 18y ago
Hi. Peldi here (the guy behind Balsamiq Mockups). Thanks everyone for the feedback, and thanks tortilla for posting the link here. Mistone - thanks. I am not planning to offer a subscription model right now, reasons here: http://www.balsamiq.com/blog/?p=59 http://www.balsamiq.com/blog/?p=59 snprbob86 - I also like drawing on a whiteboard. After using Mockups for a while though, it has become my favorite way to prototype my UI ideas, I find it to be faster and more flexible than paper, and the results are clearer (sometimes you only understand a paper prototype if you were present during its creation). Of course, I am biased, but I have heard others feel the same way about Mockups. In other words, when I only have paper and pencil, I miss Mockups. - JimEngland: polish in a mockup is the enemy of usability. People get attached to gradients, icons and whatever element is more polished in a mockup and forget to think about what really mattes, which is the layout and choice of controls. Mockups is designed to feel like paper, but be collaborative (via wikis) and immediately digital. - tortilla: collaboration/interaction is enabled in the wiki version of Mockups. I have a sticky note and callout controls that can be used for commenting, and I am planning on adding more meta-controls like this in the next few days. - nirmal: I tried to offer only the functionality that made sense and nothing more. Of course, my judgment could have been wrong. What controls don't behave as you expected, aside from the Calendar? - mmelin: yes, I'm not super happy with my home page either. The problem is that I'm selling different versions of the same product, each priced very differently from each other. I'll work on it more. Again, thanks a lot for the feedback, keep it coming! I'm @balsamiq on Twitter or you can contact me at peldi@balsamiq.com
- babul 18y ago
  This is excellent and a very useful tool that does exactly what many of the leading design agencies already do in-house e.g. as shown in the 10min video at http://www.newfangled.com/web_development_prototyping_process http://www.newfangled.com/web_development_prototyping_proces.... I look forward to using this tool more and seeing how it progresses.
- webwright 18y ago
  Cool stuff! It was near impossible to figure out how to GET it. Download it, buy it, etc. You don't have to be cheesy about it, but every page should give the user an option to convert... i.e. ASK FOR THE SALE.
volida 18y ago
something that doesn't let me innovate is useless. this doesn't seem it's going to give you any more power than the traditional IDE so why bother use it?
- balsamiq 18y ago
  Mockups is infinitely less powerful at generating code than an IDE. Its goal is to help you think about your UI (i.e. your innovations) without getting in your way. It is designed both for developers who want to iterate on their ideas before firing up their IDE and also for people who might know about usability and software requirements but who might not know what an IDE is (product managers, UX designers).
  - volida 18y ago
    The issue is that UI is not UX. mockups fail in real life. Just get your hards dirty designing the real thing than losing time desining mockups on pc... you won't make innovation with a tool that constraints you to classic examples of user experience, whatever that is called mockup or ide
- thorax 18y ago
  You should give it a shot. It does give you more power than a traditional IDE. The as-you-type search thing is genius usability for a tool like this and I'd expect to see it in Visio and the like as soon as they see how well it works. Innovation often requires iteration and that's exactly what this is good at doing.
  - volida 18y ago
    it's been a long time since I used an IDE for designing a UI. IDE is so last century, it's just for maintaining large code base.
joseakle 18y ago
This is a similar sketching application Pencil Project - http://www.evolus.vn/Pencil/ http://www.evolus.vn/Pencil/ (previously on HN - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=234676 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=234676)
tlrobinson 18y ago
Now imagine after you mockup an interface you could plug it into code and it actually works. That's Apple's Interface Builder: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interface_Builder http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interface_Builder
- balsamiq 18y ago
  There are some (very expensive) tools out there that try to output code from your design, but they are incredibly complex to use. I export Mockups as XML, which, with some fancy XSL, could be turned in to MXML or XAML...which would at least define the structure of the application. Still, that's not the most time-consuming part of a development effort, but it would sure make for a good demo! :)
  - tlrobinson 18y ago
    The nice thing about Interface Builder style tools is it doesn't generate actual code, it saves "freeze dried" versions of the objects. It's also free and very easy to use.
RossDM 18y ago
I like the concept. The AIR desktop version feels a little sluggish. Sometimes when I drag widgets onto the canvas, the app doesn't add them to the page. Don't care for the horizontally-scrolling widget browser too much - it's clunky. The widget search box helps mitigate this, but we shouldn't have to rely on it for lack of a better system. I like how easy it is to customize widget content.
tlrobinson 18y ago
Just saw this on Ajaxian: http://ajaxian.com/archives/the-pencil-project http://ajaxian.com/archives/the-pencil-project http://www.evolus.vn/Pencil/Home.html http://www.evolus.vn/Pencil/Home.html

62 points by tortilla 18y ago

What's the rational behind having some of the mockup bits be resizable and others fixed? The calendar and button bar are fixed while individual buttons are resizable.

JimEngland 18y ago

I think this would be more useful if the items looked realistic, and were not crude hand drawn graphics. If I want something hand drawn, I'll do it myself on a piece of paper.

tortilla 18y ago
I agree and disagree. They probably don't want you to focus too much on the actual design during early prototyping. But they could have made it a bit more polished and still kept it bare. Another benefit of this app is you can easily share your work (I know you can scan your sketches). But a negative is you can't really interact with it or make comments (Balsamiq).
yankees1 18y ago
Disagree also. I enjoy the hand drawn graphics. The ability to resize, rename, color, and place easily within Mockups is anything but crude. The adjective I've used in describing Mockups is elegant.
Angostura 18y ago
...and if you did it yourself on a bit of paper you would probably end up having to scan it in. I think the look is excellent. It makes explicit to the client or whoever that this is a mock-up and not to be confused with the look and feel of the app/site. You can say that until you are blue in the face and quite often someone will say 'isn't that line a bit thick'. Moreover sometimes designers can get locked into overly prescriptive design rough too early. This avoids that.
webwright 18y ago
Yaw, as a guy who has done a lot of UI consulting I can tell you this-- the more crude your mockup is, the more the viewer focuses on layout rather than design. Crudity like this will keep people from saying, "what if we had rounded corners there?"

snprbob86 18y ago

I'm partial to whiteboards for early mockups and tablets for digitizing more final mockups. I don't really see much value in using a tool like this for early mockups. You might as well use a real designer like Visual Studio, Flex, Blend, etc. and go to prototype stage if you are going to spend that much effort laying out controls.

mmelin 18y ago

You really should make the first page have a more obvious "buy now"-button. It took me a while to figure out that I had to go to an individual edition of the app (JIRA, Confluence, Desktop) to get a price.

wmeredith 18y ago
I concur. I spent about 5 minutes on the site and didn't even know it was a purchasable product until i came back here and read the comments.
- balsamiq 18y ago
  Hi. I updated the site to add more "buy" links. Hopefully it will help some.

Mistone 18y ago

i really like the idea/concept of the app, I've used iRise to do mockups and specs and was really impressed but the high price tag per license is geared to enterprise users so once my trial ended I was done. I always thought this would make a great web app with a subscription model, that would be very helpful to a huge small biz/consumer audience. not sure if balsamiq fits the bill but def excited about testing it out.

augustus 18y ago

I recently looked at a lot of mockup sites to design my site but none of them were easy and simple. I finally decided to just create a bare bones html site. I also remember seeing a canadian site a while back that helped in prototyping websites (can't remember name) but they too were too difficult to use.

railsjedi 18y ago

The demo version is pathetically useless. Stops after 5 minutes, and you cant save anything. A 30 day trial would be useful. Most people arent about to drop 80 bucks on an app after only using it for 5 minutes. Any have any alternatives? I've used Axure for a while. It works well, but the aesthetics aren't great (meaning.. its ugly). Plus it only works on windows, so I have to use it through Fusion. EDIT... disregard this comment...

balsamiq 18y ago
Hi. You can dismiss the nagging dialog and keep working for as long as you'd like. And you can export the mockup as XML and save it into a text file if you want. I'll make the text in that dialog more clear.
- railsjedi 18y ago
  Ah, thanks for the note. I'll keep using it. Like what I see so far!

balsamiq 18y ago

Hi. Peldi here (the guy behind Balsamiq Mockups). Thanks everyone for the feedback, and thanks tortilla for posting the link here. Mistone - thanks. I am not planning to offer a subscription model right now, reasons here: http://www.balsamiq.com/blog/?p=59 http://www.balsamiq.com/blog/?p=59 snprbob86 - I also like drawing on a whiteboard. After using Mockups for a while though, it has become my favorite way to prototype my UI ideas, I find it to be faster and more flexible than paper, and the results are clearer (sometimes you only understand a paper prototype if you were present during its creation). Of course, I am biased, but I have heard others feel the same way about Mockups. In other words, when I only have paper and pencil, I miss Mockups. - JimEngland: polish in a mockup is the enemy of usability. People get attached to gradients, icons and whatever element is more polished in a mockup and forget to think about what really mattes, which is the layout and choice of controls. Mockups is designed to feel like paper, but be collaborative (via wikis) and immediately digital. - tortilla: collaboration/interaction is enabled in the wiki version of Mockups. I have a sticky note and callout controls that can be used for commenting, and I am planning on adding more meta-controls like this in the next few days. - nirmal: I tried to offer only the functionality that made sense and nothing more. Of course, my judgment could have been wrong. What controls don't behave as you expected, aside from the Calendar? - mmelin: yes, I'm not super happy with my home page either. The problem is that I'm selling different versions of the same product, each priced very differently from each other. I'll work on it more. Again, thanks a lot for the feedback, keep it coming! I'm @balsamiq on Twitter or you can contact me at peldi@balsamiq.com

babul 18y ago
This is excellent and a very useful tool that does exactly what many of the leading design agencies already do in-house e.g. as shown in the 10min video at http://www.newfangled.com/web_development_prototyping_process http://www.newfangled.com/web_development_prototyping_proces.... I look forward to using this tool more and seeing how it progresses.
webwright 18y ago
Cool stuff! It was near impossible to figure out how to GET it. Download it, buy it, etc. You don't have to be cheesy about it, but every page should give the user an option to convert... i.e. ASK FOR THE SALE.

volida 18y ago

something that doesn't let me innovate is useless. this doesn't seem it's going to give you any more power than the traditional IDE so why bother use it?

balsamiq 18y ago
Mockups is infinitely less powerful at generating code than an IDE. Its goal is to help you think about your UI (i.e. your innovations) without getting in your way. It is designed both for developers who want to iterate on their ideas before firing up their IDE and also for people who might know about usability and software requirements but who might not know what an IDE is (product managers, UX designers).
- volida 18y ago
  The issue is that UI is not UX. mockups fail in real life. Just get your hards dirty designing the real thing than losing time desining mockups on pc... you won't make innovation with a tool that constraints you to classic examples of user experience, whatever that is called mockup or ide
thorax 18y ago
You should give it a shot. It does give you more power than a traditional IDE. The as-you-type search thing is genius usability for a tool like this and I'd expect to see it in Visio and the like as soon as they see how well it works. Innovation often requires iteration and that's exactly what this is good at doing.
- volida 18y ago
  it's been a long time since I used an IDE for designing a UI. IDE is so last century, it's just for maintaining large code base.

joseakle 18y ago

This is a similar sketching application Pencil Project - http://www.evolus.vn/Pencil/ http://www.evolus.vn/Pencil/ (previously on HN - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=234676 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=234676)

tlrobinson 18y ago

Now imagine after you mockup an interface you could plug it into code and it actually works. That's Apple's Interface Builder: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interface_Builder http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interface_Builder

balsamiq 18y ago
There are some (very expensive) tools out there that try to output code from your design, but they are incredibly complex to use. I export Mockups as XML, which, with some fancy XSL, could be turned in to MXML or XAML...which would at least define the structure of the application. Still, that's not the most time-consuming part of a development effort, but it would sure make for a good demo! :)
- tlrobinson 18y ago
  The nice thing about Interface Builder style tools is it doesn't generate actual code, it saves "freeze dried" versions of the objects. It's also free and very easy to use.

RossDM 18y ago

I like the concept. The AIR desktop version feels a little sluggish. Sometimes when I drag widgets onto the canvas, the app doesn't add them to the page. Don't care for the horizontally-scrolling widget browser too much - it's clunky. The widget search box helps mitigate this, but we shouldn't have to rely on it for lack of a better system. I like how easy it is to customize widget content.

tlrobinson 18y ago

Just saw this on Ajaxian: http://ajaxian.com/archives/the-pencil-project http://ajaxian.com/archives/the-pencil-project http://www.evolus.vn/Pencil/Home.html http://www.evolus.vn/Pencil/Home.html