There is an increasing plethora of tools available when it comes to sketching layouts/wireframes for solutions. It’s amazing how rich these tools are becoming and how productive some of them can be in a workshop scenario. If you’re trying to present layouts and flows to customers in a way that they can understand easily and can help them visualise how their application is going to look and operate when it’s created, it’s getting more and more likely that you’ll be using some of these tools.

(I don’t intend to diss the good old “pen and paper” – or whiteboard – approach, but when you’re art skills aren’t the best, some of these little apps are more effective).

Here is a look at some of the things I’ve used.

Balsamiq Mockups

This Adobe AIR-based app was one of the first I used. Whilst my experience with any of these tools is still a little theoretical, I was really, really impressed with the wealth of tools and components available in Balsamiq. And combined with the Napkee tool, you can easily convert your Balsamiq Mockups into working HTML prototypes for that extra level of confidence.

Microsoft Expression Blend SketchFlow

Doing a lot of work in the Microsoft space, I was keen to see what their front-end focussed “Expression” suite brought in terms of mocking up. One advantage this has over Balsamiq is that it allows for basic workflow/process flow definition. I’m going to be attending a training course over the next few weeks in which I should hopefully get a chance to investigate this in a little more detail. There is also a great overview of SketchFlow here (this is part 1 of 3).

iPlotz

Another Adobe AIR app which comes with additional tools like variable views (sketch / Windows app / Mac app). iPlotz also has the concept of project management and collaboration which allows tasks to be defined and assigned making it more applicable to design teams when compared to some of the alternatives.

Pencil

This is a Firefox add-on that allows for very simple GUI mockups. It’s not as rich as any of the tools mentioned so far in terms of screen components and so on, but a couple of colleagues who have used it have suggested that it’s quick and dirty but it’s simplicity can be a bonus if you’re trying to throw together something very, very quickly.

There are obviously loads more, but these are just a few of these tools that I’ve used. When I get some real world experience I’ll probably be in a better position to provide more educated comment. Any views on any of these tools would be appreciated.