Proof of the existence of God
Finally there is proof that God exists. The proof has come in the guise of a product named Balsamiq. Balsamiq allows you to create mock GUI when specifying an application. Rather than having graphics that look like real forms etc it uses a pencil drawing lookalike approach.
Here is my reasoning.
I rest my case.
Here is my reasoning.
- It does nothing you can't do for free in the IDE you undoubtedly already have.
- The result looks far worse than a mock up you can create in your IDE.
- Once you have the mock up you can't do anything useful with it except export it as an image or print it. You can't, for example, actually use that for a real form later in the project's life cycle.
- The result looks crap. Not poor, crap! It looks like a 7 year old has drawn it with a wax crayon....a blunt one.
- Balsamiq brought in revenue of over 100,000 US Dollars in its first 5 months.
I rest my case.
Comments
btw. which IDE do you use that are as fast as Balsamiq to create mockups ?
Now, to address your points:
1. many of my customers are not developers and don't know what IDE stands for.
2. The results look nothing like the final product on purpose, otherwise people will think that "you must be done!" with the coding part as well.
3. Once you have a mockup image you can share it more easily than a drawing on paper or on a whiteboard. Collaborating and getting feedback is a huge part of why the app exists (the other being helping you think through your ideas). I added some text about this here recently: http://www.balsamiq.com/products/mockups
4. Again, that's on purpose, so that people won't think you'll get offended if they give you their honest feedback. This, in fact, my best idea yet.
5. Yup, that's a fact.
As for selling my soul to the devil...I'm not religious, but I loved your conclusion! :)
I would love to donate to you a license of Mockups for Desktop if you'd like to try it in full, just email me.
Peldi
Thanks for posting. I'm pleased you took my post with the humour that was intended :-)
Your offer of a license is a kind one. I wont take you up on it just yet though as I don't think I have a use for it.
I must however give you full credit for your success. A simple idea that has been accepted very well. If someone had proposed I wrote this app I'd have said "Nah". I'm not too good at predicting future trends though, you should have heard how stupid I thought Bill Gates was back in the 80's :-D
The fish was so complex that it couldn't possibly have evolved by accident so proved conclusively that God must have created it and must therefore exist.
It then suggests that God exists through faith alone, and that with conclusive proof there is no longer any need for faith. As a consequence God spontaneously disappears :-)
Having used Visio (decent), OnmiGraffle (best) and even PowerPoint (sucked) - Mockups was the "ah ha" moment that stimulated our entire coding team. As a guy who spends a lot of time laying out interfaces for customers, Mockups keeps it simple and straight forward to show the core interface with some annotation - the styling of the interface can be completely separate (and should be).
Balsamiq Mockups is definitely NOT perfect. I have a list of things I would personally love to see. I hope Peldi picks up on some of the bigger things I see/need with the tool at some point (he has a history of listening to customers very closely).
He has created something that solved a unique problem - one that I was certainly pissed off about. We wanted it immediately after we saw the first video of it on-line.