Keynote as a prototyping tool?
by Brandon SchauerI saw two things in the past week that made me think about Keynote as a prototyping tool for interaction design. First was Steve Mulder of Molecular showing a PowerPoint prototype at the UXWeek panel, ‘Next Generation of Web Applications‘. Second was stumbling over the Flash export panel in Keynote.
With about 10 minutes of design and another 5 minutes of debugging, I was able to slap together this prototype using Keynote and save it out as a Flash file. Using the prototype you can (a) show/hide a panel, (b) add an item, and (c) delete the item.
Obviously, Keynote as a prototyping tool does have some limitations, but it also seems an appropriate light-weight choice when you want to evaluate or communicate a linear progression of interaction.
Pros:
- It’s really fast — admittedly, this isn’t a great prototype, but it took <10 minutes.
- It’s very portable — it’s useful for communicating with clients or testing with users.
Cons:
- You can’t convey hover — there’s no way to create passive highlighting, pop-ups, or change pointer icons.
- Linear logic only — although the path of the interaction can branch, Keynote really can’t support much logic beyond what a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure book can support.
Oh, and here’s the Keynote file I used to create the prototype.
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September 2nd, 2009 at 6:22 am
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