Ethnio is web based user research recruitment tool developed by Bolt Peters – a company which specialized in remote user research. The tool makes it super easy to create user recruitment screeners which can then be attached to any web site. The screener is basically a popup window that asks web site visitors if they would like to participate, followed by a few custom questions. Ethnio also comes with a control panel that allows the recruiter to see an overall status of the recruiting process, as well as the ability to contact the ones which are of most interest. Naturally, Ethnio can be combined with screen sharing software such as UserVue or GoToMeeting, for the actual remote research part. Great little tool!

Also, be sure to see the awesome screencast which explains the product perfectly in a humorous way. Ethnio also offers a trial for the first 20 recruits.

SketchBook Pro is a very nice little application which feels like it sits somewhere in between paper and the digital world. The tool is probably more geared toward people who are equipped with a pen and tablet that makes it a lot easier to draw with than with a mouse. After playing around with it for a few minutes, one advantage became apparent over traditional paper based sketching techniques. Sketching on an electronic canvas along with the power of layers and undos at your disposal, offers the ability to refine and change more flexibly than on paper. Sure, there are those people out there who will argue that all sketches should be kept and not erased so that the process is made visible. Nevertheless, sometimes little corrections still have to be made and software such as this makes it a breeze.

I’ve noticed a couple of other great features with SketchBook Pro. There is a ruler tool that allows you to draw straighter lines when required. Then there is the marker which looks great and has a similar effect to the water colour style of real world makers.

Grab the 15 day free trial here (and click to “software trials” item).

ProtoShare is a fully web based prototyping tool developed by a company called Site9. The third version of this product has been released in early April which brought forth improvements to performance as well as to collaborative aspects. ProtoShare offers such features as page templates, collaborative discussion, interactive prototyping, support for multiple states, drag and drop interface elements, and export functions.

A few features of ProtoShare also make it stand out from other tools on the market. For one, ProtoShare offers increased reusability of interface elements with the help of clippings. Clippings allow to save and store common pieces of an interface onto a flexible clipboard, which can then be pasted and repasted easily wherever required. Another interesting direction in which ProtoShare is moving into is by allowing to attach custom CSS styling to elements, and in turn providing greater flexibility. Being web based, ProtoShare also allows you to save your work online.

A few weeks ago, ProtoShare has also began experimenting with an iPhone prototyping mode that is currently in beta. By allowing users to export their prototypes into HTML, the software makes it easy to preview the resulting work in an actual iPhone. A detailed post on this topic can be found here here.

Signup for a 30 day free trial.

ax_admin is a software product which enables commenting on Axure HTML prototypes. Yes, Axure has collaborative creation features, however these are only supported while working within the software and not after an export. Should you wish to obtain feedback on an exported prototype, ax_admin jumps in to fill this gap by wrapping it with an additional interface. The software is web based and claims to have support for comments by RSS, comment status, and direct URL linking to specific pages.

Have a look at the demo here.

WireframeSketcher is a plugin for the popular Eclipse development platform and allows for the creation of quick wireframes. This tool comes with a wide palette of draggable user interface elements, widgets, sliders, and icons as most user interface designers would expect. The latest version also supports states for certain form elements allowing to specify such things as disabled, selected or enabled modes.

What sets WireframeSketcher apart is definitely the storyboard mode (as seen on the second screen). Basically, drawn screens can be organized in a linear fashion into presentable stories. This features is an interesting exploration of the communicative role of prototyping which many UI tools fall short on. Another unique feature of this program is how it handles masters. With WireframeSketcher users do not have to worry about defining masters up front (at the time when it still it is not known which elements are to be shared across). Instead, pages are simply created and if a user wishes to reuse a page as a master, the page is inserted as a “Master Screen” object anywhere on a new page. What is also interesting is that in this way, users can also combine multiple master pages, providing even more flexibility. Overall, this one is a very interesting tool.

Download it and try it from here.

ForeUI is another recent addition to the growing number of existing prototyping tools. Some of the features it supports include drag and drop of elements; creation of customized elements; and a prototype mode that generates either a slide show or HTML. It shares a low fidelity text tool called “Bla Bla Bla” similar to the Greeked Text plugin posted earlier.

Something perhaps less seen in the other tools out there is the Rumble slider which turns the background of the prototype into a crumpled piece of paper, suggesting stronger incompletion. Another interesting approach is the accessible Image Dock area that allows the designer to populate it with images that are to be used in the prototype. Finally, ForeUI also allows to theme the prototype choosing from a selection of Wire Frame, Windows XP and Mac OS X looks.

Download it here.

JustProto just came out recently (a month ago) with a few paid plans providing UI designers with another potential prototyping tool. The application is completely web based and allows pretty standard prototyping features such as pages and page masters; drawing of standard form elements; rich text control; grid snapping and property inspection. At least from what I’ve noticed, the tool’s event handling capabilities are pretty limited as so far the only supported event is an “onclick” allowing a potential page change. Although I haven’t seen it live in the free preview, the makers of JustProto claim a feature which allows “immediate preview of changes” which seems pretty interesting (perhaps it requires 2+ collaborators is what I think). Overall, this tool looks and feels very smooth and has quite the potential to evolve. Personally, I would like to see it stand out a bit more from the rest of the tools out there with something more unique.

Try it online here.

Balsamiq Mockups is quite a popular Adobe AIR wireframing tool and for very good reasons. The main person behind this interesting tool, Giacomo ‘Peldi’ Guilizzoni, was perhaps one of the first to tap into the power of sketchy-like wireframes, which is a visible style used through the software. Mockups’ users reaffirm over and over again that the tool works great for early phase ideation where lower fidelity conceptual work matters more. With this sketchy feel, Balsamiq helps to steer the focus more toward bigger picture ideas away from visual detail. This degree of incompletion in the generated mockups also invites more feedback and stirs discussion.

The feature set is also widely expansive. Various types of elements such as radio boxes, buttons, and text areas can be dragged straight into the workplace. Contents of various elements such as pull down menus or tabbed navigation can often be edited very rapidly by simply double clicking them and modifying the appropriate text formatting. More so, Mockupstogo.net has emerged which hosts a variety of user contributed UI patterns, speeding up the design process even further by allowing the sharing and reuse of components.

Pretty cool piece of software if you ask me, and more importantly super friendly people behind it.

Download it from here to give it a try.

Infomaki is a tool for gathering early user feedback based on displaying individual screens and asking simple questions. Typically, the questions look something like “where would if click if…” with the mouse clicks being recorded and eventually summed up and displayed as heat maps. Infomaki has been developed by the people over at NYPL Labs, and just a few days ago finally went open source (requires Ruby on Rails 2.2+). One interesting thing about this software is how flexible it is to the participants in terms of the duration of the evaluation. Since each screen shown is basically a independent evaluation of its own, it makes it possible for users to choose how long they wish to participate – being able to stop at any time. Thumbs up for going open source! :)

Download it from here.

Credits: Michael Lascarides – NYPL

The first version of FlairBuilder, an Adobe AIR wireframing and prototyping tool, has just arrived. The tool shares similarity with other existing products, as it has master pages, drag-and-drop elements, and support for some event based behaviours. A few things seem to stand out however. This being the free online viewer allowing collaborators to view FB files without installation. Also, FairBuilder has an interesting Group Box element to which further elements can be dragged into and are automatically grouped. More so, this tool also begins to explore the unification of the prototype with live online content such as Google Maps or YouTube videos. FlairBuilder looks promising as the author, Cristian Pascu, after releasing the first version is very much open to user feedback.

Download or try the demo.