Put down that pencil…taste Balsamiq!
BY Editweapon @ August 23, 2008
When I’m working on a brand new design, I pretty much can’t think without a pencil and paper. But Peldi might have changed all that for me with Balsamiq.
The verdict? It’s fahking delicious!!
So here’s a video of my first impression / first time using Balsamiq. I decided to build a mock up of iTunes because I had watched Peldi build a mockup of iTunes three weeks ago, but that memory was hazy, so I thought it would make for a pretty good experiment for Peldi and you, dear reader. (I don’t know why my face is all blacked out, but that prolly for the best.)
Put down that pencil…taste Balsamiq! from editweapon on Vimeo.
Here’s Peldi building a mockup of iTunes. (And now I know what I was missing.)
PS - I recorded this with Silverback, a usability testing tool that I should write a review for.
Here’s the short version: It’s pretty good. SUPER simple and easy to use. Well done on that front. But it needs to have an to just record the active window and they need to figure out how to make the export video to .move quicker. This 10 minute video took approx 30 mins at 50% size and "High" quality. (I’m on MacBook Pro with 2GB of RAM and 5400 RPM HD.)
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Patrick, thanks SO much for the demo.
It convinced me of two things:
- there’s still a bunch of things I need to smooth around the edges (I hate how many times my software made you go “oh shit”, I just hate it)
- Silverback is 100% perfect and I’ll go sign up right now. Watching the video gave me the same exact pain in my gut / borderline panic that I used to get when sitting behind the one-way-mirror doing usability studies at Adobe. From an end-result point of view, it’s perfect.
Once again, thanks for this. It’s immensely useful to me. I’m fired up to make Mockups better now. Ciao!
Peldi, I say “oh shit” all the time, so don’t worry too much about that. Then again, I love an obsessive fixer, which you seem to be.
Btw, I’m thinking of buying a condo / 900 sq foot room in Scottsdale. Instead of using paper, I used Balsamiq. I’m definitely getting quicker.
Only “problem” I encountered was that I wanted to figure out how to angle the couch and chair in this section so it’s diagonal, but there’s no way to rotate an object like that. Not that you should be able to though?
Here’s a pic of my mock-up. The orange text is sort of how I wanted to put the couches.
http://skitch.com/editweapon/we2e/balsamiq-mockups-for-desktop-loft.xml
NOTE ABOUT SILVERBACK: I got this email about 3 hours after posting this.
Companies who find your tweets and do something to help you are freaking AWESOME!