I came across this pretty nifty light-weight prototyping tool Pencil on the weekend. If you follow my del.icio.us bookmarks (as seen on homepage), you would’ve caught it earlier. I have been busy with finishing up the end little bits of the OS project and catching up with school readings so I haven’t had the chance to write a little blog about the tool.
This is a small Firefox 3 add-on that you can install that adds a small Visio-like prototyping tool right inside your browser! Many interface designers spends endless amounts of hours making low-fi mock-ups in Visio or even PowerPoint. What makes this tool different is that it is very simple and doesn’t come with all the clutter on your screen. You might be able to make out from the screenshot above that it comes with the standard GTK and Windows GUI controls. Although it does not have the same level of configurability as Visio, it serves well as a tool for the initial stages of interface prototyping. After you have decided on the wireframe of the interface, you can then go and burn away the cash and time to finalize that shiny design that you were looking for.
Best of all, this is all free!