Let me ask you a question.
What is the most important aspect of a website or an application in recent times?
Guesses can range from the domain name, search engine optimization, and content to filtering out creative agencies for your project. But what if I tell you that the most important aspect of a website/app is its user?
In order to define success for a website, you can simply say that when a user submits their information, you have generated a lead. This lead generation process completes the sole purpose of developing a website in the first place. Hence, a user is an important part of a website.
For any user to align with your lead generation goals, they should be able to navigate through your website easily. Here comes the role of a great user interface (UI) and user experience (UX).
Before beginning any development process, a website design company works on the UI/UX part of the website to help you understand how the final design will pan out. That’s how significant the UI/UX approach and process are.
Here you go if you are approaching UI/UX design for your web/app and need to identify the best UI/UX prototyping tool.
What are the Best UI/UX Prototyping Tools in 2022?
While there are many free UI design tools available online, we have chalked an exclusive list of the ones we think are the best for usage.
8. FlowMapp
As per its name, FlowMapp is one of the best UX prototyping tools used by web designers across the world. The prototyping software is enriched with online collaborative tools for you to explore different stages and categories of your user experience.
There are multiple features supported by FlowMapp. You can use the prototyping tool to develop intuitive sitemaps and share them with your team to assess the workflows while collaborating on the designs.
In addition to this, you can build flowcharts using FlowMapp for creating user navigation journeys to follow on your website or application. The prototyping tool also enables you to handle content, external links, page descriptions, and more. Once done, you can directly share the flow with your clients, and they can restructure the site as per their requirements.
7. Marvel
Marvel is an easy-to-use prototyping tool to help you create visually appealing digital products. The tool provides rapid prototyping and testing facility, which comes in handy for a large design team for effective collaboration. Moreover, Marvel enables the generation of design specs that can effectively power up the flow of your user experience.
This prototyping tool can accommodate even large teams and offer them the facility to collaborate on a web/app design. If you are an individual user, you can use it for free for one project. For enterprise-level collaboration, you can opt for Marvel Enterprise 3.
The software features a huge collection of pre-developed images, icons, and assets for web designers to turn their ideas into reality.
6. Origami Studio
Origami Studio is yet another popular UI design tool. The prototyping tool sports a Canvas, which allows you to resize, drag, and drop the layout to create your prototype. You can use the UI designing tool to draw and edit different types of layers, videos, images, text, and more that you can import using Figma or Sketch.
The prototyping tool has a layout for the creation of complex interfaces that can respond to the content. In addition to this, Origami Studio has another key feature–patches. Patches enable the addition of interaction, behavior, and animation for effective web/app designing.
5. Figma
If you are looking forward to delivering better digital products in the least possible time, your best bet is to consider Figma as your go-to prototyping tool. It is a comprehensive design platform and can be used for designing, prototyping, and testing.
It also consists of Auto Layout, which assists you in the manual resizing of objects for easy and responsive design. Besides this, the application is also home to plugins to automate repetitive and mundane tasks. You can use the tool to achieve consistency in terms of effect, grid, text, color, and style.
4. Framer
A framer is one of the best UI/UX design tools used for creating impressive and interactive designs from scratch. You can create realistic website designs as well as applications within a short period of time through interactive components, layout tools, polished assets, and more.
The tool can assist you in the designing of a user interface for MacOS, Androids, iPhones, and more. One of the best features of Framer is that you get the option to select the best from diversified ready-to-use templates to save plenty of time and resources. Besides this, you can also design any kind of interaction through carousels, galleries, and to-do lists.
3. Axure RP
Looking for a professional prototyping tool to design UI/UX for your website or application?
Here’s Axure RP for you!
It bestows the power of building realistic and functional prototypes using unlimited combinations of actions, conditions, and event triggers to offer unmatched digital experiences to your users. Besides this, you can use this tool to design diagrams, wireframes, customer journeys, and UX documentation for a feature-rich prototype.
Another interesting offering of Axure RP is its widget. This widget of Axure RP can help you design working forms, dynamic interfaces, and sortable grids. Besides this, you can leverage multi-state dynamic panels for designing scrollable and swipe-able user experiences.
2. InVision Freehand
One of the secrets behind impressive web design services can be attributed to InVision Freehand. The prototyping tool enables you to connect using a collaborative and inclusive hub.
InVision Freehand offers a free hand to web designers with its centralized whiteboard. In addition to this, the tool includes multiple templates for every aspect of website/application design. Moreover, InVision Freehand can be used for brainstorming UI/UX designs, strategizing, planning, wireframing, creating flowcharts, and effective collaboration. Another salient feature is the centralization of designs through the addition of Figma, Sketch, and Adobe XD.
1. Adobe XD
Let’s talk about the top prototyping tool–Adobe XD!
Almost all web designers know about Adobe graphic products, including Illustrator and Photoshop. These leading applications collaboratively help web designers to edit and create images, graphics, composites, and art using Photoshop. Alongside, Adobe Illustrator is used for the designing of vectors and illustrations.
Adobe XD prototyping tool enables you to deliver exceptional web design, app design, game design, brand design, and more. It can render animations and create vivid in-motion prototypes besides playable videos.
How to Select the Right UI/UX Prototyping Tool?
It is definitely going to be difficult for you to select the right UI/UX prototyping tool for your web/app design.
But there’s a trick to getting over the ambiguity.
Assess your web/app design requirement and then analyze the features of these prototyping tools. Know what non-negotiable features you require for your work and filter out the tools not offering those features. Also, compare the prices of these tools, and you will end up with the best UI/UX prototyping tool for your web or application design project.
Author Bio:
Brijesh Jakharia co-founded SPINX Digital in 2005 and takes great pride in crafting web and mobile marketing solutions for mid-market businesses to enterprises. Marketing is his passion, and the thrill to build a brand from the ground up has helped him craft successful brand stories for world-class clients. While not at work, he loves to spend his time on research and reading digital content stories.