UI Prototyping with PowerPoint 2007
The UI is one of the most important part of an application. Jeff Atwood wrote in a great blogpost, that the UI should be the first thing you do.
Unfortuantly there are many methods how to prototyp a UI. I found a very intresting video in the blogpost from Jeff: UI Prototyping with PowerPoint 2007.
PowerPoint? Ich don´t want a presenation!
Why PowerPoint? PowerPoint 2007 has some great features which allows us to build such an UI in very short time:
(I currently work on this project)
A important note: This is only the prototyp!
You can see some of the components and the general design and it looks better than with Paint or on a paper. The advantage of PowerPoint: It is still simpler to use as Photoshop!
Everyone (Projectleader, Designer, Developer) who can work with PowerPoint has the chance to bring his ideas into the design! It´s simpler to edit instead of a Photoshop image or a HTML dummy.
Features of PowerPoint 2007:
There are many effects:
You can use the templates:
And the "cool" effects:
(sorry – I have only the german version of PowerPoint)
With these tools you are able to build very fast a good-looking UI prototyp.
Another intresting site with the "UI Prototyping" Topic.
If you look for alternativs read Jeffs Blogpost 
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BlackWasp
April 24, 2008
Interesting. I seem to be forever trying out new tools for mocking up interfaces. My preferred tools at the moment are Visio and Excel.
Visio is probably obvious because of the built-in Windows-style templates and the extensibility.
Excel is very good in front of the customer because of the ability to drop in some of the VBA controls (drop-downs, etc) and because of the ability to very quickly give some interactivity to the ‘prototype’. It is great to see the customer reaction when the calculations on a screen actually work. Additionally, becuase most customers have used Excel or a similar spreadsheet application, they can quickly become involved and their participation gets their buy-in to the design.
It may not be as pretty as PowerPoint but for the on-the-hoof early design meetings with a customer it is a powerful tool in the kit bag.
Now I need to think about bringing Excel and Powerpoint together somehow…
Peldi Guilizzoni
June 21, 2008
Hi there. I just released a little tool that tries to make software/website prototyping easy, fast and painless. I’d love to hear your thoughts about it: http://www.balsamiq.com/products/mockups/
Peldi