Fast prototypes and mockups

This week I found myself in need of doing some fast prototypes. We had set the ambition that we wanted to do a new webapp for a project in 7 days. Obviously that requires things to go fast but we still needed to do some prototyping. Previously I had used Balsamiq Mockups (http://www.balsamiq.com) back when they first launched, so I gave it a run with the desktop (Adobe Air) based version. Still same great functionality and above all easy to get the first mockups done. I really like they sketchy style that lets you focus on functionality and the ease with which you can add sample data into the components.
After a while though when I got into the more complex screens of the prototype I found myself i need of a more expressive tool. I reverted to Google searching for alternatives and guess what showed up. Good old Powerpoint. A good example is : http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/interactive or the 10 minute intro http://www.krisjordan.com/2008/09/07/10-minute-mock-prototyping-tips-for-powerpoint/. On MSDN there is a little bit older intro : http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/2006/02/20/535444.aspx There is also some great templates out there and I ended up trying out : http://www.istartedsomething.com/20071018/powerpoint-prototype-toolkit-01/ which somewhat simple and limited in terms of the number of controls. Powerpoint gives you the flexibility, but is also harder to get started quickly as you need to setup basic controls and master slides.
I’d probably be continuing w. powerpoint for now, but when writing this blog I researched a little more and others before me have created better reviews. take a look at a pretty extensive list from Dan Harrelson from Adaptive Path http://www.adaptivepath.com/blog/2009/03/24/rapid-prototyping-tools/ and good pointers can also be found on Henrik Olsens blog http://www.guuui.com. The latter led me to http://www.foreui.com which I’ll be trying out in the near future. Stay tuned