Thursday, January 18, 2007

Application Workflow and Prototyping

I have a current project which requires me to document the workflow for three labs and then to develop a web based application. I've done this for years and usual would use the Adalon tool for creating a wireframe of the application work flow, then jump to the prototyping phase. Adalon was nice for this, and would generate the skeleton code for you, but it's no longer being developed, has a bug in the wireframe that it generates and just didn't feel 100% "right". Yesterday I found a product called Axure RP Pro from Axure Software that I think will work much better. One thing I like about this product is you can create the flow charts of the work flow, then use that as the foundation for your prototypes. The prototypes can quickly be generated by use the drag and drop of "widgets" of common controls you have in a web browser. You can link actions with these controls, like opening a dialog, another window or page, etc. The software will finally generate an HTML prototype that you can send to the user to click through as well as the specifications document for the application. They have a free 30 day trial on there site as well as some nice flash tutorials of how to use the product.