ProtoShare

Native iPhone Prototypes with ProtoShare

Posted: June 17, 2009

We have an exciting new proof of concept in ProtoShare: the iPhone Prototype component. As we looked around at the iPhone prototyping market, we saw that there really is no way to pull up an interactive prototype on the iPhone. No way to experience the real interactions on the phone in user experience testing. And then we were talking to our office suite mates who happen to be a group of pretty well known and accomplished iPhone consultants and application developers, Raven Zachery’s Small Society. (Anyone see the new Zipcar app at WWDC last week?) Anyhow, they pointed out that having an interactive prototype natively viewable on the iPhone would be a big help when working with clients. They use wireframes now, but sometimes it’s difficult for customers to get the feel for an app if it’s not on the iPhone.

With that in mind, one of our engineers took a look at ProtoShare, spent a few days developing a concept, and came up with an implementation. Since ProtoShare is an HTML-based web application—not Flash—we can easily produce viewable and navigable wireframes for the iPhone. The component he developed is basically a container in which you build your wireframes, it also makes the prototype look and behave like an iPhone app when viewed through Safari on your iPhone.

Keep in mind that this component is still a proof of concept. However, we wanted to get it out there so people could take a look at it and give us feedback on what would be necessary to make this a useful feature. Do you want this? What do you need for this implementation to really work? What are the absolute necessities? What do you want to see? Do you want a iPhone application that integrates with ProtoShare? Let us know any and all feedback at in the forum.

Check out the videos below that demo how the component currently works. Some features we’re currently working on: orientation awareness, better transitions, and easier workflows for building the prototypes. Stay tuned….there’s a lot more to come.

How the ProtoShare iPhone Component Works

An Advanced iPhone Prototype using CSS3