Once you start developing mobile apps, you will get to the stage where you want to create prototypes that look and feel like real products. You might start out with pen and paper or desktop-based wireframing tools, but at some point the process becomes more time consuming than it’s worth. That’s why many app development companies choose prototyping tools to create interactive wireframes.
The only question is which tool is the right one for your projects? Here are the best free tools for you..
Cacoo
Cacoo is a cost-free online diagram program for different forms of diagrams, such as bar charts, UML, vector graphics, and site maps. It provides a lot of clip art or vector images that you can use to construct diagrams for almost any need. You can connect Google cloud accounts to save it and display diagrams on your online drive.
You can access further Clipart and vector graphics using the Find watercolors throughout the Cacoo Shop feature. This link takes you to the Cacoo website, in which you can find more art and models to build your diagram. You can also set up a private sharing diagram or post a social sharing connection on Facebook, Twitter, or Google+ using the “Property” control function. The “Inspector” window allows you to customize all aspects of diagrams, such as colors, image positions, font attributes, etc.
Also read- Career as Web developer
Origami Studio
Created by Facebook, Origami Studio is a powerful tool that creates sophisticated prototypes. The availability of prebuilt components makes designing using this tool efficient and quick. A key feature of Origami Studio is Origami Live using which we can preview mockups live in real-time on mobile devices. It is easy to import designs from Sketch and transform it as needed while preserving the project layers.
WebFlow
Imagine that while you are designing a prototype, you are also creating a live website. And that too with zero codings. Appealing, right? WebFlow lets you do just that!
Once you are done creating a high fidelity prototype, WebFlow helps you turn it into a production-ready website with a click. This is a boon for independent designers as they can export the prototype without the help of developers. Webflow is a website prototyping tool that focuses on creating web animations, interactions, and responsive web design. By providing a speedy way to design and prototype, it has become one of the best prototyping tools for all skill levels.
Axure
Axure is a functional prototyping tool built for professionals. It is a feature-rich prototyping platform that facilitates a better handoff to developers by enabling the prototype to be shared on the cloud. Some of its attractive features are data-driven sorting, support to conditional logic statements, dynamic content for hover functions, etc. It also has comprehensive documentation that makes collaboration within a team easy and organized.
Fluid UI
Fluid UI is a prototyping tool that takes pride in being lightning fast. It allows prototyping for web and mobile interfaces for both high and low fidelity. Its simple user interface and feature-rich readymade libraries make it a tool that is easy to get started with, even for beginners. Collaboration using Fluid UI is effortless. Different people can work on a prototype at the same time and can also link them together for testing interaction.
Framer
Framer is one of the best prototyping tools for interactive design. It lets you create completely functional prototypes very fast. Framer X store has thousands of resources using which it is easy to design a UI in a simple and speedy manner. Realistic prototypes and responsive layouts are the highlights of Framer.
Its beautiful designs are backed up by code, which provides a seamless workflow. It also has extensive documentation and several tutorial videos to help you learn. Its flexibility and power make it a top-rated tool among designers.
UXPin
UXPin is a wireframing, UX design and mockup tool that comes with share, comment and review features as well as features such as approval requests, task assignments and Slack/email notifications, enabling users to streamline workflows. The simple drag and drop functionality will let you drag icons, custom UI elements and images to enhance a wireframe.
Administrators can set team and role-based permission access and lock up important projects.
Pricing: Free/ $29 (Pro)/ $49 (Team)/ Custom (Enterprise, billed monthly)
Create anything from well-planned wireframes to high fidelity interactive prototypes in real-time using UXPin. It supports elaborate animations and conditional interactions, which is very advantageous for testing of UX design principles. Its project management system and collaboration capabilities are very advanced, making it a suitable tool for big teams. It allows importing from Sketch and Photoshop, live screen sharing, and commenting, which makes UXPin an impressive prototyping tool.
Website:www.uxpin.com
Marvel
A full-featured web and mobile prototyping tool that is free, fast, and easy- that is Marvel for you. It lets you create wireframes, prototypes, and design specifications. It allows designers to add interactivity and dynamic transitions to static mockups to create a realistic interface. It has a minimal learning curve; hence it is easy to grasp even for non-designers.
Its library of prebuilt templates, components, and a repository of stock images greatly aids the prototyping process. Well-known organizations like Stripe, Buzzfeed, and Typeform are users of Marvel.
Last but not least, there’s MarvelApp. MarvelApp is a really cool multifunctional design platform that can be used to create mobile app wireframing for multiple devices. This application allows its users to assemble designs quickly and efficiently via its drag-and-drop feature. MarvelApp also lets users bring their prototypes to life with realistic screen transitions (using triggers, i.e. hover, swipe or click).
Pricing: Pricing starts at $12/month (Pro package).
Website:www.marvelapp.com
Principle
Principle is a prototyping tool that specializes in the design of high-quality interactive prototypes. It is very similar to Sketch and has features such as alignment, screen connections, real-time previews, etc. It does not provide collaboration for team works; however, it offers an option to work offline, which makes up for the shortfall. Its attention to motion and interactivity makes it find a place among the best prototyping tools for designers.
Mockplus
Mockplus is a prototyping, collaboration and code handoff tool that keeps everything a team needs inside one app. No more app switching, you can plan on the Storyboard. No more design switching, you can design in their high-fidelity prototyping tab, creating interactive components, animations and transitions. For front end developers you can export code in CSS and get code snippets in Objective-C, Swift and XML. When finished you can share your project online by simply sending your client a link. On top of the main features, you can use plugins for Sketch, XD, Photoshop, Axure and Figma if you need.
On the collaboration side of things, there is built in task management across all pages of your project – from Storyboard to design to the review. Comments are also deeply integrated, so much as that you can comment on specific layers and components. Mockplus has really created a versatile and comprehensive piece of kit here.
Mockflow
Brainstorm the UI on the whiteboard and bring concepts to life with this handy editor. With this tool, you can easily design wireframes, collaborate with other teams and create a handy style guide to define the UI of your brand. You have the option to use the standard templates and loose elements that are available.
Pricing: Free (starter)/ $14 (professional)/ $30 (organization)
Website: www.mockflow.com
Sketch
Sketch is a great app design tool for vector editing, prototyping and collaboration. The tool offers a digital design toolkit for app building which contains plenty of design symbols that are reusable and shareable within the design community. You can even add data to your designs and transform them into user flow diagrams.
Pricing: For a personal license, users pay $99/year. Alternatively Sketch offers a package per device (volume license) for $89/year/device.
Website: www.sketch.com
Wireframe.cc
Sometimes having various choices can also be cumbersome. Wireframe.cc is an ideal tool to design wireframe apps for developers who can’t make up their minds. Its limited features and minimalist UI simplifies the designing process and speeding up the overall development.
Wireframe.cc is a free, open-sourced web-based software that offers basic functionality with drag-and-drop elements, built-in templates, and a color palette to set the theme. Additionally, it has various sharing options so that the clients and other team members can view the diagrams and offer feedback.
The one drawback of using Wireframe.cc is that it doesn’t support interactive wireframes.
InVision:
Cost:
- Single project — Free
- 3 projects (starter) — $15/month
- Unlimited Projects (Professional) — $25/month
Runs on:
- Web
Prototypes for:
- Android
- iOS
- Web
Invision is by far the most popular prototyping tool in the world. Their team is constantly adding new features to help designers prototype more efficiently. With InVision’s project management page, you can organize design components into a status workflow. You can set columns for To-do, In progress, Needs review, and Approved, and drag and drop your design components into the appropriate column.You could add interactions and animations to static images. You can upload multiple file types, including JPG, PNG, GIF, AI, and PSD. It has push and pull integrations with apps like Slack, Dropbox, Box, Trello, JIRA and much more.
It has simplified every aspect of our workflow and collaboration between design and development. One can design better, faster, and more collaboratively with real-time, and it’s in-browser design collaboration and presentation tools. Seamlessly launching meetings and creating guided tours with clients, and also present designs to stakeholders.Many unicorns use this prototyping tools for us UI/UX needs like Uber, Salesforce, Twitter, Linkedin etc which proves that this tool is the best for prototyping.
Conclusion
For most developers, designers, and entrepreneurs, it’s important to have a prototype of the app before they decide on the final product. So, these online prototyping tools are available for you to create a free prototype of your app idea.