Balsamiq review from a Designer
September 28, 2017
Balsamiq review from a Designer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Balsamiq
Balsamiq is used in an Interface Prototyping class at Georgia Tech, the class is meant to provide skills/training for a professional career in UX design. Every semester about 20 students register for the class with different levels of understanding of design and level of comfort with manual sketching. Balsamiq is a tool that the students in the class are offered to do their assignment in case the students are not comfortable with their hand sketches and would like a more refined version of their sketch. It is pointed out that Balsamiq doesn't help overcome the need for sketching - as that is still the best way to think rapidly - it is just a way to present some final designs for feedback.
- Default gestures and associated icons native to Iphone and Android are available.
- Throws the design in to context of screen and the relative aspect ratios to imagine scenario more easily.
- Overcomes the problem of read-ability and consistency in size of icons and texts.
- Once the project is set up - it is easier to copy some sections without having to re-draw them.
- The UI is very clunky - it could be more vivid and simpler.
- Shortcuts could mimic design software, some shortcuts are not intuitive.
- The toggle and button options could be more vast.
- It can be more time-consuming to "think" while designing in Balsamiq. It is still faster to rapidly sketch/think and then maybe translate a final design to Balsamiq for consistency.
- Setting up each button, module, navigation, option in Balsamiq is initially time-consuming - but the payoff is high when some sections can be copy-pasted - they add to consistency and time-saving eventually.
- Paper App
The Pen tool in Paper is definitely a happy middle between Balsamiq and actual paper prototyping. It has the advantage of being able to copy/paste a section that has already been designed - but even there selecting a specific section is hard - balsamiq's sections are more clearly defined/layered. Paper is used with an external touch pen tool with provides fidelity familiar to sketching and doesn't require a mouse/clicking and dragging gestures, in essence, to "sketch" a prototype.