Published on | Prototyping: From UX to Front End — Medium Taras Brizitsky

My design career started in 2004 when I started making a little money as a UI designer. I never liked using Photoshop for creating interfaces and desperately wanted a decent tool for wireframing, prototyping and animation. They simply didn’t exist back then…

Now it’s 2018. Things have changed a lot and there’re many wonderful apps for UI and UX designers with new ones being introduced every few months.

Not so many if you’re using iPad, so pen and paper are still my most valuable and useful instruments.

Sure, once the UI kit (ok, the Design System) is ready, guidelines are finished and we have a clear vision of what is to be done, we may skip the sketching phase. But paper sketches help us quickly iterate through many rough ideas and create a very basic overview of the design. Paper is way lighter than a laptop, it doesn’t need to load and there’s no complex software to learn.

So… why not combine paper’s ease of use and digital medium’s power?

Welcome Iterate

What is it?
It’s an iPad app. Also

Iterate is my vision of a digital sketchbook for UX designers.

The app is being built to speed up initial sketching phase and be a tool that helps you test the new idea before going hi-fi.

A picture’s worth a thousand words, yet a video is always better:

<a href="https://medium.com/media/4a4799990324ea9ebace40df1c360c90/href">https://medium.com/media/4a4799990324ea9ebace40df1c360c90/href</a>

Pay attention to a few things:

The app turns hand-drawn shapes into fully editable vector objects.
The Pencil is only used for drawing while fingers adjust shapes. No Pencil — no worries, just use an on-screen button while drawing.
Any shape may turn to another: box to text, text to image and so on.
Preview mode allows you to see your mockup in real size without actually having a device.

Iterate looks similar to Adobe Comp that also heavily relies on shape recognition (we’re partially inheriting their shape dictionary), but it’s a standalone app that doesn’t rely on Adobe’s CC infrastructure.

Wait, there’s more…

What about being able to select one of the overlapping layers without guessing? Just tap and hold.

<a href="https://medium.com/media/f12a567cc17ba834f798e6180fa0fea2/href">https://medium.com/media/f12a567cc17ba834f798e6180fa0fea2/href</a>

Or create static guides without digging menus? Easy!

<a href="https://medium.com/media/41884f9fb14b084f622a6b01e71c7a52/href">https://medium.com/media/41884f9fb14b084f622a6b01e71c7a52/href</a>

Add a note, arrow or doodle? That’s what Freehand mode is for.

<a href="https://medium.com/media/de9c3d2930c3bf1cccdeb05a3c94d50d/href">https://medium.com/media/de9c3d2930c3bf1cccdeb05a3c94d50d/href</a>

And for the ones who love experimenting there’s a nonlinear, unlimited undo:

<a href="https://medium.com/media/6a5874434aa888fcde21c35c8d41844b/href">https://medium.com/media/6a5874434aa888fcde21c35c8d41844b/href</a>

(Creating that one has been especially hard).

A small FAQ

When?
We plan to release the first public version of Iterate within a couple months.

What do I need to run it?
Any iPad capable of running iOS 11, even iPad mini would work (but iPad Pro with Apple Pencil will provide better experience).

Is it going to be expensive?
Nope, but we haven’t set the price yet. Some basic features will remain free.

To be continued…

<a href="https://medium.com/media/b85dfbb5286d8a25cf2e754b9462cf45/href">https://medium.com/media/b85dfbb5286d8a25cf2e754b9462cf45/href</a>

Iterate, the UX designer’s digital sketchbook was originally published in Prototypr on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Iterate, the UX designer’s digital sketchbook

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