As I prepare to leave home for a week, I wanted to get prepared to be able to do application UI prototyping while on the go. In this blog post, I want to share with you what tools I'll be using as well as write about a very impressive application that I find more and more useful for the iPad:
iDraw.
So, I'll be leaving home with these on hand: my iPad, a stack of paper and pencil. I'll be using three apps in order to create the first digital prototypes of my first iPad application:
App Cooker to simulate the application interaction, iDraw to draw UI elements and
Eraser to create transparent background of pictures.
As you may know, I'm a big fan of App Cooker (my
App Cooker review) but this application is not a complete drawing application. Recently I came across iDraw for iPad and fall in love with it. In summary, I would say that this is the most complete vector-based application for the iPad. For 8.99$, you get all what you need to draw UI elements: canvas control, all shapes, fills and gradients, layers, undos/redo, precise placement, precise sizing, copy and paste, export, etc.
In the previous picture, you see the basic grid view of my iPad application that I'm currently working on. Once complete, I can export this in the Photos.app then start App Cooker, import it and add the iPad UI elements to get the following view.
As you can see, I can get a very basic UI design running on the iPad very quickly and easily while on the go. No computers required!
Eraser is used to open a picture, set a transparent colour and then save it in order to be able to re-import it in iDraw or in App Cooker. iDraw export doesn't support transparent background. Eraser isn't universal but works perfectly on the iPad.
As you can see, with these three iPad applications, prototyping iOS applications on the go has never been easier en enjoyable.
