Wireframing Marathon Starts!

Big news friends! As we’ve promised last week during the initial launch, today we start our wireframing marathon.

We have prepared interviews with various players on the market and will be publishing the interviews one by one, so you will be able to comment and ask your own questions.

On the track we have:

• Balsamiq, Peldi Guilizzoni, Founder;
• iPlotz, Mark Vernon, Founder;
• HotGloo, Wolf Dieter Becvar, Marketing and Communications;
• Justinmind, Xavier Renom, CEO and co-founder;
• Axure, Victor Hsu, Founder, Product Manager;
• Protoshare, Peter Uchytil, Product Manager; Josh Chaney, Director of Sales; Blake D. Johnson, VP of Business Development;
• Adobe Fireworks, Sarthak Singhal, Adobe Fireworks Team Member.

Get ready to have an insider’s look at each of the company, as they share their successful stories, experience and future vision of the market.

As a bonus we have compiled a timeline of contemporary prototyping and wireframing history. The timeline is open for collaboration, so if you’d like to enhance it, leave your email in the comments and we will add you to the editors.

However, if you want to go back to the very beginning…
Nowadays, every website and software application is developed on a prototype, known as a wireframe. But long ago people have started using prototypes to transform ideas into reality and share their ideas with others.

2005-present
SaaS-based Prototyping – abundant number of low-fidelity wireframing apps appear. Later focused on collaboration and PM.
MockupScreens, 2005
Gliffy (a-la online Visio killer), 2006
Jumpchart, 2007
Balsamiq, 2008
Protoshare, 2008
Justinmind, 2008
Pencil Project (free open-source), 2008
iPlotz, 2009
HotGloo, 2009
etc.

2000
Prototyping-centric Software – tools like Omnigraffle, Axure and iRise spring to the market.
Omnigraffle, 2000
Axure, 2003
iRise, 2003

1995
Comprehensive Layout – comps are used to represent relative idea to a client as a rough draft.
In graphic design and advertising, a comprehensive layout or comprehensive, usually shortened to comp, is the page layout of a proposed design as initially presented by the designer to a client, showing the relative positions of text and illustrations before the specific content of those elements has been decided on, as a rough draft of the final layout in which to build around.

1986-1992
Visualizing/Designing Software – Microsoft and Adobe present design and presentation software.
Adobe Illustrator, 1986
MS PowerPoint, 1987
Adobe Photoshop, 1990
MS Visio (originally Shapeware, in 2000 was acquiered by MS). 1992

1985
Paper Prototyping – usability testing and concept sharing via paper elements.
Paper prototyping started in the mid 1980s and then became popular in the mid 1990s when companies such as IBM, Honeywell, Microsoft, and others started using the technique in developing their products.

1980s
Visual Programming – programming becomes visual, allowing one to create prototypes on an early stage.
Visual IDEs allow users to create new applications by moving programming building blocks or code nodes to create flowcharts or structure diagrams which are then compiled or interpreted. These flowcharts often are based on the Unified Modeling Language.

1975 Information Architecture – new term for effective complex information concept development.
Information Architecture was originally a term with a meaning more akin to what is called today Information Design. The term “Information Architecture” was coined around 1975 by Richard Saul Wurman, an architect and AIGA member.
The term was later appropriated by Web Design experts and applied to complex web sites, since Information Architecture is an important aspect of Web User experience design. This appropriation has changed the original meaning into what is today considered to be Information Architecture.

1970s
Waterfall model – no room for successful prototyping.
The waterfall model is a sequential software development process, in which progress is seen as flowing steadily downwards (like a waterfall) through the several phases. The waterfall development model has its origins in the manufacturing and construction industries; highly structured physical environments in which after-the-fact changes are prohibitively costly, if not impossible. Since no formal software development methodologies existed at the time, this hardware-oriented model was simply adapted for software development.

1904-1972
Henry Dreyfuss – prototype as an illustration of a product in context.
Henry Dreyfuss was an American industrial designer. Dreyfuss based his design works on user-centered design principles, business interests and engineering.

“Dreyfuss took the concpet of design and prototyping to the next level: the prototype as an illustration of a product in se that is situated in a context. In many ways his understanding of the function of the prototype is the beginning of our modern conception of a prototype. Reading his work of prototyping process, first published in 1955, read like a work on modern user-centered design (UCD) process because it advocates the same UCD processes we apply to our prototypes to make software better: cross-disciplinary stakeholder involvment in design and user involvment in evaluation.“
Effective prototyping for software makers.

1847-1931
Thomas Alva Edison introduced iterative approach and multiple prototyping methods.
Now, with new materials and advanced technologies, prototypes served not only as source of innovation, but also allow to share the concept and requirements.

“Edison’s iterative approach and use of multiple prototyping methods are still critical approaches to prototyping today, as witnessed by the successful use of rapid prototyping in successful sofware design.“
Effective prototyping for software makers.

1452 – 1519
Leonardo da Vinci - paper models as a proof of concept.
Drawings of Davinci can be considered one of the most fascinating examples of early prototyping. Being chained to technological limitations, his ideas lived for a while to be built.

“Da Vinci’s paper prototypes, and the models that others built from them, server as proofs of concept well in advance of the technology that would eventually enable their development. Its in the same way use of prototypes will serve as a proof of concept that starts software development in the right direction.”
Effective prototyping for software makers.

3000 B.C.
Designers, IAs, UX, and software developers were not the first to prototype their creations. Since the invention of written language, people started materializing ideas into meanigful form with the help of “pen” and “paper”.
Large complex pyramids cannot be built without proper documentation and understanding of physics.

4000 B.C.
Clay models were used to represent various mythological creatures and gods.
With history and technical development, 3D modelling is now used in 3D computer graphics.

Great minds of the contemporary history:
Alan Cooper;
Jef Raskin;
Donald Norman;
Jakob Nielsen.

If you are new to wireframing and prototyping, we suggest several great articles for you to start with:

The Importance of Wireframing,
The Importance Of Wireframes In Web Design And 9 Tools To Create Wireframes,
Shades of Gray: Wireframes as Thinking Device,
Content Wireframing: Ducks meet row,
HTML Wireframes and Prototypes: All Gain and No Pain,
Get Wireframing: The All-In-One Guide,
“I Need to See It” – Wireframing for a Richer Web,
The future of wireframes?