job posting<\/a> advertising the need for a killer designer with virtual free reign … I bet they don’t stick to a syntax highlight text editor …. :) ).<\/p>\nPersonally, I use a wide mix of tools — whatever seems right and wouldn’t want to set artificial boundaries.<\/p>\n
I try to start out with some sketches on paper or a whiteboard. <\/p>\n
The next step depends a lot on the scale and challenges of the specific project. If I really want to concentrate on the user interface and the overall experience, I’ll use a tool like Photoshop or Illustrator. It allows me to make quick changes to the user interface without a lot of fuss (and create lots of different versions). If I have a bit more time, and a prototype implementation would be reasonable, I’ll often break out a development tool and mock it up and experiment. For less important projects, I’ll proceed directly to end game and work on the final user interface directly in the actual project (if I’m able to do that). <\/p>\n
There’s definitely no right answer for everyone. It makes sense to use the right tool for the job. However, I’m sure some of my readers work with companies or on jobs where there are rules in place regarding the tools, steps, etc. If you’d care to summarize and share, I’d love to hear them! <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
If you’re creating an application with a user interface, what tools do you use — and when do you use them? There’s different stages in design — from conception to implementation. There’s some discussion around a 37signals post a few days ago. The discussion was about how they don’t use Photoshop as part of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[4,3],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pd5QIe-5Q","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":217,"url":"https:\/\/www.wiredprairie.us\/blog\/index.php\/archives\/217","url_meta":{"origin":362,"position":0},"title":"The ASP.NET Single Page Interface and AJAX Patterns","date":"May 9, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Posted on MSDN, by Dino Esposito, \"Single Page Interface and AJAX Patterns.\" What is it? From the article... Single-Page Interface Model To take full advantage of AJAX, you need to have all of your features, or at least most of them, in a single page. This is known as the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Coding"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1749,"url":"https:\/\/www.wiredprairie.us\/blog\/index.php\/archives\/1749","url_meta":{"origin":362,"position":1},"title":"Nest Update #12: Software at 3.0 with New Features","date":"October 3, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"As the blogosphere exploded yesterday with news of a second generation Nest thermostat and a new major version of the software (for the thermostats and the controllers such as the web site and various SmartPhones), I wondered what impact the new software and hardware would have on average users, like\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Recommendations"","img":{"alt_text":"IMG_0630","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.wiredprairie.us\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/IMG_0630.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":368,"url":"https:\/\/www.wiredprairie.us\/blog\/index.php\/archives\/368","url_meta":{"origin":362,"position":2},"title":"Do we really need another Javascript framework for UI?","date":"June 16, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"From the web site, RoughlyDrafted magazine, Cocoa for Windows + Flash Killer = SproutCore. Apple doesn\u2019t sell ads, it sells hardware. But if the web requires Flash or Silverlight to run, Adobe or Microsoft can either intentionally kill alternative platforms like the Mac (or Linux), or simply make them work\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Coding"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":175,"url":"https:\/\/www.wiredprairie.us\/blog\/index.php\/archives\/175","url_meta":{"origin":362,"position":3},"title":"What’s the perfect API?","date":"May 5, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"I was skimming a rant by someone on arstechnica about how badly messed up Win32 APIs are and how superior everything else is, when this paragraph grabbed my attention: The reason must be that no one in Microsoft actually gives a damn. Each group develops their own UI widgets in\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Coding"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1201,"url":"https:\/\/www.wiredprairie.us\/blog\/index.php\/archives\/1201","url_meta":{"origin":362,"position":4},"title":"Microsoft: Make the “Metro\/Zune” look a standard. Publish it. Push it. Now.","date":"February 11, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Apple makes user experience inroads every day on Windows when a developer follows Apple\u2019s Human Interface Guidelines for design for a Windows Application. This post was inspired when I installed Miro this morning on my desktop PC. (Don\u2019t get me started that it opts-in a bunch of changes and a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Coding"","img":{"alt_text":"SNAGHTML1c0109","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.wiredprairie.us\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/02\/SNAGHTML1c0109.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1329,"url":"https:\/\/www.wiredprairie.us\/blog\/index.php\/archives\/1329","url_meta":{"origin":362,"position":5},"title":"My Nest Thermostat installation experience","date":"December 18, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"After the amazing mad dash for the Nest thermostats when they were first made available for pre-order, I ordered three thermostats for our home from Best Buy (as Nest.com had sold out). We\u2019ve got a three zone heating system, and I wanted to replace all at once (as the system\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Recommendations"","img":{"alt_text":"20111218-IMG_0096","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.wiredprairie.us\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/20111218-IMG_0096_thumb.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wiredprairie.us\/blog\/index.php\/wpjson\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wiredprairie.us\/blog\/index.php\/wpjson\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wiredprairie.us\/blog\/index.php\/wpjson\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wiredprairie.us\/blog\/index.php\/wpjson\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wiredprairie.us\/blog\/index.php\/wpjson\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=362"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.wiredprairie.us\/blog\/index.php\/wpjson\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wiredprairie.us\/blog\/index.php\/wpjson\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wiredprairie.us\/blog\/index.php\/wpjson\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wiredprairie.us\/blog\/index.php\/wpjson\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"image\"](\"http:\/\/www.wiredprairie.us\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/06\/image15.png\")
<\/p>\n