I came up with the different testing scenarios, the overall test script and the clickable prototypes themselves. Yet the study is to be conducted by a usability specialist from Dell’s Enterprise Design Group: “Hans”.

When I met him for the first time to go over the test plan and the prototypes, he asked me: “are you Diego Pulido? The author of ‘Paper-in-Screen Prototyping’?”

I was surprised. How did he know about P.i.S.P.? Either he’s been a hard-core reader of ACM’s Interactions magazine for years, or he simply spent some time dissecting my online presence and everything out there with my name on it.

“Yes”, I responded. “How did you know?”

Turns out he is in fact, besides a usability specialist at Dell, a professor at University of Texas at Austin. He teaches a User Experience and Design course at UT’s School of Information. He explained to me he had come across the article I published alongside Dr. Davide Bolchini and used it as reference in his curriculum to teach students about prototyping in UX.

It felt strange at first, but I must say I also felt rather honoured and proud at the fact that something I have done, albeit rather small in the grand scheme of things, has had some sort of positive impact in other people’s education.

I certainly haven’t forgotten about what I did for what was initially conceived (practically by accident) as my graduate thesis project at Indiana University’s HCI program –but I haven’t thought about it in a long time. This also makes me realize it has been 3 years since that project was “abandoned” completed.

I have had a few spurts of creativity here and there in the last couple of years when it comes to design, but hearing this from Hans has inspired me to work again towards something great –and uniquely “mine”.

I yearn for the this feeling once again: the one I felt when I was told potential future Interaction Designers and Usability professionals were doing and learning from something I made.

Good, hard work pays off. It lasts. it goes a long way. Never forget that.

Vector graphics (optimized for the web), Layers, PAGES. It just made sense for the way I go about making wireframes and prototypes –and it worked the same way on a Mac as in a Windows PC.

Adobe says Fireworks it’s not going to go away entirely soon. But what is clear is that it won’t be part of Adobe’s new Creative Cloud range of products: the new suite of programs that will be accessible by subscription only (Photoshop, InDesign, Flash, among others).

Casually enough, only 3 days before Adobe’s Creative Cloud announcement, I had been asked at work to conduct a Fireworks quick prototyping workshop for the rest of the enterprise design team at Dell. (What are the odds…?)

I still intend on conducting the workshop: after all, Fireworks is not entirely “dead” and it won’t be for a while… but perhaps I shouldn’t spend too much time going deeply into it.

So, “What do I actually have time to start learning now? what tool do I start embracing now?”

The Options

OmniGraffle has always been a great companion throughout my years as an Interaction/UX Designer. It’s incredibly malleable, powerful and it’s even capable of some interactivity between pages, which could be used in usability tests (something I have always been able to do on Fireworks easily). The problem? It’s a Mac-only product! At Dell we work on Windows-based PCs, so that option is out (except for the occasional chance I get to use the OmniGraffle iPad app for something quick at the office–something I have done a couple of times before).

There’s also Pixelmator and Sketch, which handle vector graphics rather well and offer a simplified user interface compared to that of most Adobe Creative Suite products, but they lack “Pages” and most importantly (for me) the ability to create “hotspots” between pages and states for interactivity. This is crucial for me since this is a rather common deliverable I produce at work. Also, they’re also both available exclusively for Mac, so even if they were just like Fireworks, I couldn’t use these at work.

Sadly, for those of us who must work in a Windows-PC environment to create wireframes and prototypes, Apple’s Keynote is something we can’t easily include in our design toolbox. This incredibly powerful tool made to create “PowerPoint-styled” presentations and slideshows is capable of transitions and animations that closely resemble what was otherwise considerably harder to achieve using something like Adobe Flash. There are even sites like Keynotopia that provide templates and techniques to create rich, compelling prototypes that work beautifully –even on touch-screen devices.

How about Visio? Many of us are familiar with this diagramming program. The latest version is actually rather impressive. In fact, I am a fan of the overall look and feel of everything within Microsoft Office 2013 (most particularly OneNote), but I find the same problem as before: I could use it on my Dell laptop, but not on my Mac at home unless I ran Parallels (and no, I can’t be bothered to…)

That’s part of Adobe’s beauty: it’s OS-agnostic. I think we can all agree on this.

The reason I choose not to embrace Visio as my main tool of choice is partially the same reason I am choosing not to dive in head first into one of the best design tools I have ever seen: Microsoft Expression Blend & SketchFlow. I could only use it whilst operating inside Windows. This, and the fact that the learning curve for this tool is far, far greater than that of Visio. I must say that if I were part of a team in which developers used nothing but Visual Studio, created mainly XML and .NET files and we all used MS Expression to craft our deliverable all under one homogeneous environment, it would all be grandiose. But alas, this is not the case for me either.

What about other OS-agnostic applications?

Axure! Of course… The program that was created with UX designers in mind. Wireframing, prototyping, interactivity –it’s got it all. This should be every UX/Interaction Designer’s main weapon. I think, much like many other designers out there, that there’s hardly anything better. Among it’s many advantages, I can particularly appreciate being able to do things I was never able to do in Fireworks, such as actually typing characters in text boxes and interacting with drop-down menus more seamlessly using real HTML, CSS and Javascript (not just having a PNG file with mapped, clickable areas). Axure is so great that it can render these prototypes inside touch-screen devices like mobile phones and tablets.

The only issue I find with Axure is its learning curve. Granted that it’s a tool that was made with wireframing and prototyping at it’s core, it does require some time to get to a useful level of proficiency. Knowing how to use “dynamic panels” to evoke certain behaviors in a prototype does require some extra time that I don’t quite have at the moment (this happens when you are also trying to crack the surface of something much more complex, yet so much fun).

I still feel Axure is one of the most useful tools for UX/Interaction Designers to master (and I fully intend on continue making it part of skill sets), but this won’t happen fast enough. Not right now.

So back to the workshop I promised my coworkers I was going to conduct: I couldn’t just show them how to create a clickable prototype in the now deprecated “best design tool ever”…

I started researching for all possible alternatives; gathering ideas from various heart-felt commentaries made by other sad (but mostly angry) Fireworks users on Twitter and other web sites immediately after Adobe’s announcement –many of which I’ve already mentioned here. Yet, it wasn’t until I started navigating through Adobe’s web site that I saw something I had seen briefly some time before but hadn’t pay much attention to…

Adobe Muse

Muse is a subscription-based program that allows for the creation of fully-fleshed web sites without ever writing a single line of code. HTML5, CSS3, Javascript. All the latest web fonts. All the latest design standards. Slideshows. Carrousels. All the latest integrations (Google Maps, Facebook) –basically, all you could possibly need to create interactive prototypes and more.

Muse goes many steps beyond simply making it easy to create an HTML prototype. Much like Axure, Adobe has created Muse with the particular intention of making content with different clickable areas, changing states, interactivity…etc. Yet, Muse does this by offering a considerably more simple, straight forward interface that leverages on some of the Adobe “UI familiarity” some of us have from working with other CS products in the past. It shows you tool tips and menu items when you need them and hides what you don’t. At times it even looks “too simple”, but that is part of just how brilliant this program is for people like me who will soon be on a serious Fireworks withdrawal.

With Fireworks, there were always some limitations that I had to live with, such as not having real text boxes users could type in pretend-data in, or real check boxes users could click, or funny-looking make-believe drop down menus, but the ease with which I was able to create good-looking, interactive prototypes was worth the shortcomings.

I find that Muse makes all of best things from Fireworks (from a prototyping perspective) available in a much more improved manner. This is not to say Muse REPLACES Fireworks because it simply isn’t a vector-graphics creation/editing tool. Despite being able to create some basic visual assets within Muse, I will be using Fireworks PNGs and Photoshop PSD files if I ever want to create a really realistic HTML prototype. But then again: I almost never have to create interactive prototypes that require having a high level of fidelity.

I know some of you might be thinking: “well, why not use InDesign? Illustrator? Flash?” (yes, some people might still say “Flash”). The truth is that any of these other programs can certainly be used for the same purpose: vector drawing + connected pages + layers + interactivity. But tools like InDesign and Illustrator were not originally created with wireframing and prototyping in mind, which in turn makes creating the same kind of deliverable more difficult than it should. And Flash, well… unless you have some time to kill and learn ActionScript 3, it’s just not practical.

The flow within Muse just makes sense: you start in the “Plan” view to create your pages and your master pages. This section already looks like a web site’s site map as you begin creating your site. It allows you to craft the information architecture of your site rather seamlessly.

Lynda.com’s Adobe Muse practice files.

Did I mention it also optimizes web sites for tablets and phones? Brilliant!

The “Design” view is where the real creative work happens. Notice that there isn’t 4 or 5 separate areas of tool tips and panels and options. There’s an action bar on top that changes according to the element that you are manipulating. Less things on the user interface means less confusion. Despite utilizing many of the same names and behaviours from other Adobe products, this is one that a complete novice could learn and start using fairly quickly. One concept Muse does not handle is that of “Layers” which is practically omnipresent in all other Creative Suite programs. But once you start creating sites in Muse, you’ll see they are not to be missed at all.

Lynda.com’s Adobe Muse practice files.

The “Preview” mode is an embedded WebKit browser inside Muse that allows you to preview the page or site you are working on the same way you would on other browsers. You can also preview directly in your browser of choice.

Lynda.com’s Adobe Muse practice files.

And then, there’s “Publish” and “Manage”. This is directly tied to Muse’s subscription model (Muse has always been available under a subscription model, even before the introduction of Adobe Creative Cloud). You can host your site under the “Business Catalyst” service Adobe provides with your subscription and manage your site’s analytic –but this is beyond the scope of what I need this tool for. Nevertheless, I recommend you take a look at all these other perks you get with your Adobe Muse or Creative Cloud membership. It’s all incredibly robust and impressive.

I see Adobe Muse as a game-changer for the way I design wireframes and interactive prototypes. More than a game-changer, I see it as a “game-simplifier” that instead of limiting the possibilities of what I can create with this tool, it enhances them considerably.

If you are a UX/Interaction Designer looking for a simple, yet powerful tool to create wireframes and prototypes, Adobe Muse should be right up your alley. I know it is for me. I am still in the middle of my free trial and I know enough to know I will be using this as my main design tool (along with Fireworks when needed –because I still love it!). I’ve also recently subscribed to Lynda training videos to learn as much as I can about Muse. Lynda already has 3 solid courses on Muse that I highly recommend checking out.

I hope you found this brief introduction (and personal review) of Adobe Muse useful and informative –specially if you are as much in “digital mourning” about Adobe Fireworks as I am.

If you have any other suggestions about other programs that could help designers like me cope with Firework’s imminent demise, please share them in the comments section below.

Here are (in my opinion) 10 of the best images I’ve taken (with my iPhone), edited (with a great number of photo apps) and shared (via Instagram & Flickr) so far this year:

The organizers wanted to develop an iOS app that would stand from the crowd of other festival apps, and this exactly what my friends (iOS developer Robert Murray and Visual Designer Chrissy Cowdrey) set out to do.

Almost all the existing music festival applications are still rooted in iOS’ “original” patterns and felt rather outdated I began exploring this landscape. I thought there was plenty of room for improvement for an application that is meant to complement your music festival experience.

As an avid music festival-goer myseld, I was particularly invested in making an application that I would personally want to use. For this reason, I was able to draw insights not only from basic research, but also from my own personal experience.

There were a lot of “first” in this app (compared to other music festival applications). We wanted to include the now nearly omnipresent “drawer slide” mobile pattern for the main menu, a horizontal “dial-like” slider for the different days of the festival and various other overlays for different submenus.

We also wanted to include deep Facebook integration to allow people to not only which one of their friends were going to be at the festival, but also know exactly when they arrive at the stage where the user would be at the time. We even wanted to provide a unique photo-taking/sharing experience right from the app that would appear in UR1 photo feeds (mobile and web), as well as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

Finally, we also wanted to include an augmented reality component to the app. This would allow users to simply point their camera to any stage and see who was playing right at that time and place.

When there was a solid vision in place, I proceeded to created more detailed low-fidelity annotated wireframes that I would then share with him and Chrissy (Visual Designer) in order to communicate the visual layout and the specific interactions across the various sections within the app.

Lastly, after a number of iterations, the final visual design was applied and we were ready to submit to the AppStore in time before the festival in December of 2012. Unfortunately, a couple of weeks before the festival was due to start, the organizers decided to cancel it due to “inclement weather conditions in the South Florida region” and “continued effects from Hurricaine Sandy”.

It’s a shame we could get this app in front of users to enhance their music festival experience like I believe no other app has been able to until now. I currently don’t know whether we’ll be able to use this app for a future version of UR1, but we certainly look forward to repurposing this effort on a different application of similar characteristics.

This song was created from scratch & finished during my flight between Austin, TX and Seattle on 28th March, 2013 using only “BeatMaker 2″ for iOS (iPad).

[Artwork also created using only iOS apps at Austin Bergstrom International Airport before takeoff.]

This is a collection of the best bits (beats?) of yet another session of playing with ReBirth (iPad app) and recording what happens without previous planning of any kind.

Everything was improvised, and only mildly edited to make a more cohesive, fluid “song” out of the session.

The organizers wanted to develop an iOS app that would stand from the crowd of other festival apps, and this exactly what my friends (iOS developer Robert Murray and Visual Designer Chrissy Cowdrey) set out to do.

Almost all the existing music festival applications are still rooted in iOS’ “original” patterns and felt rather outdated I began exploring this landscape. I thought there was plenty of room for improvement for an application that is meant to complement your music festival experience.

As an avid music festival-goer myseld, I was particularly invested in making an application that I would personally want to use. For this reason, I was able to draw insights not only from basic research, but also from my own personal experience.

There were a lot of “first” in this app (compared to other music festival applications). We wanted to include the now nearly omnipresent “drawer slide” mobile pattern for the main menu, a horizontal “dial-like” slider for the different days of the festival and various other overlays for different submenus.

We also wanted to include deep Facebook integration to allow people to not only which one of their friends were going to be at the festival, but also know exactly when they arrive at the stage where the user would be at the time. We even wanted to provide a unique photo-taking/sharing experience right from the app that would appear in UR1 photo feeds (mobile and web), as well as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

Finally, we also wanted to include an augmented reality component to the app. This would allow users to simply point their camera to any stage and see who was playing right at that time and place.

When there was a solid vision in place, I proceeded to created more detailed low-fidelity annotated wireframes that I would then share with him and Chrissy (Visual Designer) in order to communicate the visual layout and the specific interactions across the various sections within the app.

Lastly, after a number of iterations, the final visual design was applied and we were ready to submit to the AppStore in time before the festival in December of 2012. Unfortunately, a couple of weeks before the festival was due to start, the organizers decided to cancel it due to “inclement weather conditions in the South Florida region” and “continued effects from Hurricaine Sandy”.

It’s a shame we could get this app in front of users to enhance their music festival experience like I believe no other app has been able to until now. I currently don’t know whether we’ll be able to use this app for a future version of UR1, but we certainly look forward to repurposing this effort on a different application of similar characteristics.