Our team uses myBalsamiq a lot. Whether it's a brand new design, feature, or an iteration, we fire up a new project in the team. We then set up some basics that we've found helpful. Not only do we collaborate within our team, but we reuse familiar groups of assets we've built. This way, our engineers and stakeholders know what to expect from us. It has been over time that we added these as needs arise, and it's always a working process.
Common Models
While each project is different, these are the different types of models we use over and over.
- Overview: Contains information on the "why" and goals of a design and links to assets and specs. Also important notes.
- User or App Flows: Sometimes we pull in more detailed diagrams that were created in other apps such as Lucid Chart.
- Interactive Mockups: These are the designs that allow users to interact with screen and complete tasks.
- Business Layer: Architectural explanations of underlying technical frameworks, libraries and functions needed to achieve functionality.
- Data Layer: Database and storage details needed to delivery functionality.
Overview and Outline
Here is what our overview page looks like. This is key to bringing all expectations, teams and assets together. It serves as an outline of the project and contains links to all assets. Sometimes those assets include animations, prototypes or just have a note to update our custom icon font with the latest character set.
These consistencies help us to pass on a design with one prototyping link, regardless of what team or role sees it and it still has everything together.
UPDATE December 2015
Thanks to Balsamiq for featuring me and this article on their Champions Blog!