What is SketchFlow?
SketchFlow prototypes are designed by drawing out flow, composition, screens and states of an application UI.
Defining the flow of the application
You can use drawing tools, sticky notes, WPF or Silverlight controls and components, as well as imported images to iterate on and visualize your ideas quickly. SketchFlow even comes with a set of sketch styles for the standard platform controls, helping you present your work with a consistent “prototype” look to keep focus on the concepts presented. Using animation, you can illustrate design intent for dynamic interactions easily.
SketchFlow lets you create, test, iterate, present and evaluate ideas in rapid succession, enabling you to consider approaching projects that previously would not have been cost effective or profitable.
Quickly iterate on screen layouts using the built-in Sketch styled components
SketchFlow prototypes can be explored interactively from the first sketch on, even if the prototype does not actually contain any active user interface yet. The ability to rapidly demonstrate how the application will flow and transition from screen to screen and from state to state enables clients to appreciate the user experience of the application earlier in the design process and highlights navigation and application flow issues early in the development cycle, helping you and the client to reduce painful and costly last minute concept changes.
Gathering effective and timely feedback from a client is just as important as creating the prototype in the design and development process. The freely distributable SketchFlow player ensures that your Silverlight concepts can be demonstrated effectively to your client through a standard browser wherever they are located. Clients review the Silverlight prototype in their browser, testing multiple scenarios and provide in context feedback for the development team by annotating their experience as they navigate the different screens.
Client adding feedback in the browser-based Silverlight SketchFlow player
Once the feedback is finalized, clients can save and return it to the design team who can then import it directly back into Expression Blend. The client’s annotations are visible in-context on the design surface, making it easier to review and act on client feedback.
You are able to rapidly evolve your prototypes utilizing the full functionality of Expression Blend 3 with no limit to the scope of a prototype. Mock-up functionality, experiment with data-driven UI with data binding and sample data. Apply rich interactivity with Behaviors, without writing code, using extensible libraries of packaged interactivity building blocks. The ability to integrate with existing workflows by importing Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator files at full fidelity; preserving layers, vectors and even most text formatting accelerates your workflow further.
SketchFlow enables the creation of comprehensive project documentation through an export to Microsoft Word command that creates an outline project document complete with table of contents, screen grabs of the application flow and the different screens within the project. This literally saves hours of time during document creation and enables you to easily keep your project outlines up to date even while you are rapidly iterating on the application.