A Good Wireframe's Worth More Than A 1,000 Words

If you've ever designed a software product or built a complex website, you've gone through at least some of the following steps:

1. Gather Requirements
2. Brainstorm & Conceptualize using Wireframes
3. Do the Design
4. Develop
5. Test
6. Deploy

Well, step #2 of creating wireframes has gotten a whole lot easier with Balsamiq. It's a great tool for quickly creating wireframes and mockups. Balsamiq has a pallet of design components that allows you to do traditional client software, web-apps and mobile app wireframes. I recently used it to brainstorm an iPhone mobile app with a client. In just a couple of hours we were able to collaboratively do 80% of the screens and evolve how the different components would interact with one another.  Having predefined iPhone images made life so much easier than having to create them one by one. Here's an example of how a screen gets laid out in Balsamiq.

Balsamiq is definitely a keeper.