Here’s a quick summary of how to produce a scrolling region:

1. Create a large design.
2. Create your container design.
3. Drag and drop your large design onto your container design as a ‘component’.
4. Double-click the component to edit its properties, as follows:
   • Check the “Maintain size when component changes” option on the Style tab
   • Uncheck “Fixed Width” and “Fixed Height” on the Position tab
   • Set an arbitrary small size to make it easier to work with, say 300 for “Width” and “Height” (Position tab)
   • Hit “OK”
5. Resize the component to the actual desired size.

That’s it!

You may have noticed our new Website redesign and, while we’ve been planning a lot of new product developments, we’ve realised that we didn’t release nearly enough versions of GUI Design Studio in the year as we’d intended. we aim to fix that!

So we’re taking a different approach for 2009. Our new plan is to make a new release of GUI Design Studio roughly once every month so that you can benefit from all the latest updates sooner or upgrade whenever it’s convenient.

With this new, incremental development plan, you’ll be seeing regular small improvements with major new features thrown in, every once in a while, as they get completed.

I don’t want to reveal too much detail at this stage about the biggest new features we have planned (you’ll find out about them in due course) but, to give you a taster, here’s a few of the things we’ll be looking at:

• The interactive capabilities of the prototypes will be expanded in a big way, including better support for business logic with enhanced scenarios. So many of you have been requesting this. It’s a very exciting feature and will let you explore a much wider range of designs with much less effort.
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• There’ll be further export and documentation options to give you the flexibility you’ve been asking for and helping you take designs to the next stage.
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• Better layout tools will help you make adjustments more easily, mockup interfaces even faster and provide further prototyping capabilities.
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• We want to increase your productivity with new features and support to help get you started on projects and designs faster. One part of this will be the long-awaited release of a series of training videos. Another part will be the release of user interface design pattern libraries that will demonstrate good practices and get you started more quickly and easily. We’ve been talking to customers about these for over two years so you’ll be glad to know we’re finally getting on with them!
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Our goal has always been to ‘help you produce software that better meets users’ needs’. Keep sending us your suggestions and feedback to let us know what’s really important to you and help shape the tool for everyone.

We’ll certainly be keeping busy in 2009 and we wish you a very happy and productive year!

You can now gain early access to 3.0 through our Beta Program but first, here’s a few details about the new version:

• With version 3.0, GUI Design Studio has now fully embraced Windows Vista. It was already Vista compatible but all of the elements have now been re-styled to provide the Vista look and feel in addition to the existing XP, NT (Classic) and Outline styles.

  

  These are not separate elements, of course. You can change the style at any time to see what your designs will look like on different Windows platforms or to show an “unfinished mockup” look for review purposes.

• We’ve had so many requests from customers for Ribbon Bar elements that we’ve added full support for this type of interface. Now you can create designs that follow the Microsoft Office 2007 style or just experiment to see what works best for your application by comparing a Ribbon Bar design with a more traditional menus and toolbars design.

  Here’s a sneak peak at a Ribbon Bar design created in Beta 2 (available soon):

  

• For Web Application designs we’ve added a new feature to make rollover effects easy. Although rollovers were possible before, it was tricky to get them right and maintain the correct navigation behaviour. Now they’re simple to do and very flexible. This will be available soon in Beta 2.

• If you’ve struggled to get tabbed interfaces to simulate properly in earlier versions of GUI Design Studio or just found them tricky then you’ll like the changes in version 3.0. We’ve listened to all of the feedback from customers and now made them really simple to create.

• These are just a few of the 20+ enhancements and fixes in the new version.

Upgrades

If you’re a customer wondering about upgrading from your current version or if you need to purchase GUI Design Studio before the new release becomes available then don’t worry because version 3.0 will be a free upgrade for all customers.

About the beta program…

We’re currently putting the finishing touches onto version 3.0 and although the feature list has been nailed down now, there’s still time to influence the final release.

If you’d like to get an early peak at version 3.0 and provide us with feedback to ensure we’ve covered everything we need to, then you’ll want to get on the beta program now.

With thousands of users, we won’t be able to accept everyone so places will be limited. Act now to secure your place and click this link to join the Beta Program!

We look forward to hearing from you.

So the lowest of the low-fidelity prototypes are very quick hand sketches while the highest are fully detailed, pixel perfect renditions.

The obvious advantages of low-fidelity prototypes are the speed at which they can be put together and therefore the low cost involved. After all, anyone can quickly scribble designs on a piece of paper.

But one of the things we hear discussed a lot is that prototypes, especially early ones, really have to be low-fidelity. They need to impress upon people that they are obviously mock-ups and not the real thing. Otherwise, if you use high-fidelity prototypes, you may encounter these negative consequences:

1. When trying to elicit feedback on a design, you find that people pick up on irrelevant details like the colours or the choice of image instead of the content and workflow.
    
2. They may be so WOW’d by the beauty of your design that they’re unable to provide constructive critisism or they may be reluctant to do so for fear of undoing all your hard work.
    
3. Stakeholders may think that the “product” looks so finished that they complain bitterly when they can’t see much “progress” after 6 months of development and implementation.

Of course there are many truths to this argument but, for the most part, it depends upon the target audience and their level of understanding of what the prototypes represent.

Project managers, analysts and developers will have no trouble at all in understanding the scope of a user interface prototype and, in may cases, a high-fidelity prototype will help to pinpoint areas of ‘over ambitious’ design that might take many months to implement when a simpler alternative will work just as well.

For everyone else, a straight-forward explanation of the scope of the prototype is usually enough. If the stakeholders really don’t get it then you may be in trouble further down the line!

The irony of point 3 is that although a low-fidelity prototype might be better in lowering expectations that the product will be “finished in no time at all”, higher managers and stakeholders don’t always respond well to them. They’re not impressed by the rough appearance and prefer to see nicely polished, fancy displays – something they can envisage as being a final product they or their customers can use.

With specialised tools like GUI Design Studio now available, high-fidelity prototypes are becoming much easier, faster and cheaper to produce and the once held advantages of low-fidelity prototypes are becoming insignificant.

As far as we know, our customers are all enjoying the ability to create high-fidelity prototypes and designs but we understand the need to use low-fidelity presentations on occassion.

That is why GUI Design Studio provides “Outline” display modes and the ability to easily change the overall font of a design to give it a more hand-drawn, rough and ready feel. And to be able to switch back to normal again.

Here’s our trusty dialog design example in all its XP glory:

And here it is again looking like a quickly drawn mockup after a couple of setting changes:

You can see a quick tutorial video (about 1 minute) of how this transformation took place here.

Of course, if you really want to, you can also work with paper sketches by scanning them in and incorporating them as images. Place navigation boxes over the buttons and other areas then link them together just like any other design element.

The most important thing with prototypes is to define exactly what their purpose is, then to create them with just the right amount of effort and functionality to convey enough information to obtain agreement on what needs to be implemented and what doesn’t.

So what are your experiences with low or high-fidelity prototypes? Do you agree or disagree with what’s been said here? Maybe you can’t see the point of creating prototypes at all?

Leave a comment and let us know your opinions!