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You can now download the PowerPoint 2007 version of the iPhone Photo Album App and I’m happy to report that it’s been successfully tested by quite a few users.
The only problems reported have been several severe jaw dropping cases and people falling off their Aeron chairs. So just exercise extreme caution when putting that sucker in presentation mode: MockApp won’t be responsible for any injuries to you or people you show your mockups to.
So what’s coming next? Well, I have quite a few requests for UI elements to add which will come out in the next version. So if you have any requests, please do shoot them over.
I’m also brushing up on Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines document and am toying with the idea of formatting the MockApp library and template files to be more consistent with Apple’s official standards. That way, even people who don’t like to read 100+ page PDF’s will have some clue as to what Apple considers good app design just by using MockApp. And I hear Apple knows a thing or 2 about good design.
Does that sound like it could be useful? Anything else you’d like to see in MockApp aside for having code come out. Please email me at dotan@mockapp.com with your wildest ideas and fantasies (related to MockApp of course).
Alright, you guys are officially spoiled: Not only did I manage to get a debugged version of MockApp for PowerPoint 2007 out tonight (instead of Friday) but I even polished a few cosmetic compatibility details to make the PowerPoint version look as good as the Keynote version.
BUT… the price of MockApp is going up: it’s no longer free. The new price is for you to perform one of the following actions (takes less than 2 minutes):
Tell 3 friends about MockApp by email
and/or post a link to MockApp on your Facebook page
and/or tweet it: http://bit.ly/SAfk5
and/or Digg it (use button below)
So I got my PowerPoint 2007 yesterday and started playing with it on my old PC to figure out why the template file wasn’t working in ppt ‘07. The good news is: I’m 99% sure I nailed the problem and will soon release a working Powerpoint version of MockApp.
For those geeky enough to care, what happened is this: I had set the Keynote template to “hyperlinks only”. The purpose of this setting is that you can’t go to the next slide just by clicking anywhere on the screen in presentation mode. That way the user has to navigate your demo by clicking on hyperlinked buttons, links, etc. that you define in your mockup (isn’t that cool?). Well… PowerPoint 2007 doesn’t think so: it sort of freaks out by flickering the mouse pointer between the hourglass and the arrow mode while consuming a ton of CPU.
Turns out, the solution is to disable Keynote’s hyperlinks-only mode before exporting to PowerPoint. And then I can open in PowerPoint and add the same setting back in by unchecking “on mouse click” in the advance slide section of the Animations menu.
For those who don’t care, if you read this far, you’re kidding yourself: you are a geek whether you like it or not!
Good news: MockApp v0.6 is here (Keynote version only for now) and with a lot more goodness inside.
More good news: I just received my ppt 2007 for PC from Amazon so I’ll be debugging and hopefully releasing the PC/PowerPoint version later this week. Hey, what’s a few more days when you’ve waited years for MockApp…
Thanks to your feedback I was able to focus on important UI elements that were missing in v0.5. So let’s see… what’s new in v0.6?:
Added tab controllers: Added 3 entire pages of tab controllers and icons from the iTunes store, iPod, Youtube, App store, phone app, clock app and iDisk app.
Higher fidelity than ever: A ton of gradients were re-done based on actual iPhone screenshots (v0.5 was made based on the not-so-high-fidelity Yahoo UI library). I also rebuilt the picker, and the tabs, the messages.
Idiot-proof instructions and packaging of the files: My 7-year-old could literally figure out how it works now.
Added a vector phone keyboard
As always, if you can think of a UI element you’d really like me to add or if you feel the urge to give me a big kiss (I prefer checks) please email me at feedback@mockapp.com.
There are a bunch of rapid prototyping tools out there. So why bother with MockApp? Here are 3
main reasons for that:
Like a good pair of slippers
A prototyping tool should help you create great apps. So if you’re not comfortable using the tool, chances are people aren’t going to be comfortable using your apps either. That’s why a good prototyping tool should be like that pair of well worn slippers you’ve had for years and would not trade for the world. And what’s the graphic software equivalent to that pair of slippers to most people? That’s right: Powerpoint (or Keynote if you like extra fuzz in your slippers). Everyone owns PowerPoint or Keynote and most business people use them daily as a weapon of choice to put co-workers to sleep. And that’s precisely why I chose PowerPoint and Keynote to create MockApp’s templates (not the sleep part, just the familiarity).
Wireframes never get anyone excited
When I first started doing UI/UX in 1997 at AGENCY.COM, the school of thought was that you should always do your mockups in wireframes. And man… if a designer caught you putting the slightest hint … Read More
Thanks so much for the incredible response and feedback over the past couple of days. I can’t believe we launched 2 days ago! So let’s see… in 2 days, we got this very positive post by no less than TUAW (the unofficial Apple Weblog). Yayyy! The story got reposted by dozens of blogs in the US and around the world. Twitter almost changed topics from Acorn (I wish!).
More importantly, I got some great feedback to fine tune MockApp for PowerPoint 2007. I can’t believe you guys are making me dust off my old PC laptop and even worse… I have to shell out $70 to buy Micro&#@$ PowerPoint 2007. Not cool.
Anyway, special thanks to our friend Ash who noticed that my UI library was missing the tab bar controller (you know, the little black bar full of icons at the bottom of the iPod app, the iTunes app and a few others). Of course, I omitted that UI component on purpose to see how many of you actually noticed!… Right…
You’ll be pleased to hear that thanks to Ash, I have to work over the week-end to add his freaking tab bar controller and the gazillion icons that come with it. I hope you’re happy. A Jewish holiday on top of that. Way to start year 5770!
So sometime early next week … Read More
Most iPhone prototyping templates (in Photoshop, etc.) do a pretty good job if you just want to show how a specific screen would look but don’t really work as a demo.
So one of the advantages of doing this kind of prototyping in Keynote or Powerpoint is that you can use features such as hyperlinks, animations and page transitions to simulate the navigation experience that the user would have in the iPhone app.
Just my the iPhone Photo Album app sample mockup to see what I mean:
When you click on the Photos icon on the home screen (in presentation mode), you’ll see that I’m simulating the loading screen using a timed slide. So it feels like the iPhone is loading the app.
After you click on the “Yeti Sightings” photo album, notice how the transition mimics that of the iPhone. What’s the trick? A “push” slide transition creates the same visual effect as you would get on the iPhone.
If you play with the links in the mock-up, you’ll notice a few other things that help simulate the experience for the user.
Try doing that in Photoshop!
However, there are limitations. After all, I doubt that the developers of Keynote (and even less PowerPoint) knew their software would one day be used to create iPhone app prototypes… For example, you can only define one transition per slide, … Read More
For this very first mock-up using MockApp, I took a shot at the iPhone Photo Album app. Download the mock-up here in either Apple Keynote or Microsoft PowerPoint formats.
Obviously, my intent is not to re-develop the iPhone Photo Album app (it’s hard to improve on something that great anyway!) but rather to show how high-fidelity MockApp can get with an existing app as an example.
Feel free to reuse all the graphic elements such as buttons, icons, etc. to mock-up your own app ideas.
These are screenshots of the actual PowerPoint mockup, not the iPhone app itself.
Soon, I will release a free library of iPhone user interface elements entirely re-created (by my own hand) that should enable anyone to mock-up any iPhone app they can dream-up. I just need to find the time to polish it (hint: the more coffees you buy me the faster I get!)
I’ve been doing Keynote and Powerpoint mock-ups of web apps and desktop apps for over 15 years but this is the first time I “go public” and share my secret sauce. This type of rapid prototyping tool has helped so many of my employers and consulting clients over the years that I felt compelled to share it.
My hope is that many will embrace MockApp and that it will … Read More
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