The good thing about Twitter the micro-blogging service is that you get to connect with a wide range of people working and surfing in a wider circle than your own. As a result you can often be bombarded with a hourde of links to websites and online stuff that people think is useful, interesting, funny, or just pointless. Balsamiq Mockups is one of those rareish beasts that firmly belong in the 'useful' category.

Balsamiq Mockups is an Adobe AIR application that you can use to quickly build UI mockups for your website / software etc. With simple drag and drops you can quickly create some neat prototypes. Whilst this certainly isnt the first piece of software to help you do this is does have a fairly unique selling point. As far as i am aware Balsamiq is the only piece of software that deliberately makes your design mockups look like they were hand drawn.

Ever had a client who couldnt get past a small issue to see the bigger more important issue?  This sketch like apearance allows the viewer to use more of their imagination, something I think is a subtle, yet powerful advantage. By presenting the mockups in a more traditional 'hand-drawnesque' manner it allows the client -possibly even your manager- to see the mockups as a 'rough & ready' solution, and to focus on the more important issues such as functionality & applications design.

Admittedly, this software does, at first glance look a little basic and child-like. This, for the reasons above, is why its so good and why i like it so much. It also allows a little humour to enter the workplace on those dull busy busy days via its use of the Comic Sans MS font. Which again just adds to the charm of the mockups you create.

The navigation / controls are all drag and drop from the scrollable categorised topbar. For super-fast selection, use the quick add features: just type a couple of characters from the control or icon name and bam! select from the list of suggestions, and your control will be added in no time. Searching for an icon? Same technique! Try it and you'll be hooked!

When you select one or more UI controls, you’ll see a faint Property Inspector show up. It contains context-sensitive options for the selected controls. If you don’t need it, simply ignore it (it will go away when it needs to), but if you do, just move your mouse over it to use it. And if it's in your way, move it! Mockups will remember where you left it.

Another neat little feature is that Mockups uses 'human readable format called BMML (a flavor of XML)' so it's easy to duplicate a mockup and 'mash it up' with other applications. If you really wanted you could even write some scripts to transform BMML into actual code! Potentially very Useful!

Balsamiq Mockups isnt going to be to everyones liking, nor do i envisage it ever taking a significant share of the corporate office market. However for the smaller independant creative companies such as ourselves at Munklefish Web Development and other inhabitants of Manchester's Creative District, i see this being a very useful tool.

RATING: 8/10

Tags: BalsamiqMockups, UI Design, UI Prototype, Software, Design