If you are starting a new Silverlight project, you may want to take a look at SketchFlow. SketchFlow allows you to easily build an interactive prototype.
Building a Silverlight prototype with SketchFlow has several advantages:
- SketchFlow allows you to quickly put together a sample user interface for your Silverlight application. This saves you time and money as you start to flesh out the application user interface.
- Since it is so easy to build pages with SketchFlow, you can provide multiple choices and alternate design ideas.
- The style of the controls makes it clear that it is a prototype. (The fonts and controls look like they would if you drew them on your whiteboard.) This helps the users focus on functionality, not on the visual design.
- SketchFlow provides an easy way to hook pages together. For example, in the SketchFlow designer, you can right-click on a Log In button in a prototype login page to define the page that should be displayed after a successful log in.
- SketchFlow makes it easy to dummy up data to display in your UI.
- The SketchFlow player provides an easy way to navigate through your pages without building any code.
- Reviewers can add comments about the prototype directly from the SketchFlow player, making it easy to collect feedback.
- You can learn how to use SketchFlow in about 20 minutes.
Here is an example screen shot shown within the SketchFlow player. Notice the Map in the lower left corner. It allows you to navigate to any page of the prototype.
SketchFlow is part of Microsoft Expression Blend 3.0. However, it is not immediately obvious how to use it. Luckily, there is a set of videos that provide a quick start. Each video is around 5 minutes in length, getting you going quickly. You can find the videos here.
Enjoy!