Balsamiq Mockups and PeopleSoft April 9, 2010
Posted by Duncan in PeopleTools.trackback
About a month ago I stumbled across a fantastic tool called Balsamiq Mockups. It’s a product that lets you rapidly prototype the UI for some new functionality. It’s aimed at web development in general, not just PeopleSoft, but I think it’s so good that it’s something that the PeopleSoft community can embrace.
Mockups are useful for a number of reasons. They help the business understand what they’re going to get much earlier in the design process, meaning that any changes they want to make can be proposed early, when the cost to change is lower. It also helps the developer clearly understand what the requirements are. All very Agile.
Balsamiq beats other mockup methods hands down.
- It’s Fast. It has a pre-built library of controls so creating a mockup is fast, much much quicker than PowerPoint or MS Paint. So quick that you can create them on-the-fly in meetings.
- It’s more efficient. With pen and paper or a whiteboard it’s not easy to quickly rearrange what you’ve drawn. Plus, there’s no electronic copy to mail around at the end of the workshop.
- It shows only what’s necessary. Its style is more wireframe than glossy perfection, and that’s why it’s so good. No-one will be under the illusion that it’s a screenshot of something that’s nearly built.
I’ve put together a YouTube video so you can see it in action (click the video to view it on the YouTube site for higher definition).
If you like it head on over to the Balsamiq website. They let you use most of the functionality for free.
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The PeopleSoft Tipster Blog 
Hey Duncan, Thanks for the kind words and a great demo that I can share with customers! One quick tip: Try using CTRL-D to duplicate instead of plain old Copy/Paste.
We explain it in this blog post: http://www.balsamiq.com/blog/2010/02/12/byebyejumpbug/ where we call it “Fancy New Duplicate Algorithm!”