Indigo Studio, by infragistics, is a cool application that lets you create fast interactive prototypes for desktop, web, or mobile applications. It is a creative designing tool with all the user interface input options with which you can quickly create a prototype model for any application. It has a very nice interface based on Silverlight. Plus, it is free to download and very easy to install.
You will get the above screen once you install Indigo Studio. Select Project under “Select a brand new Design” option. You can then chose to make Screen or Storyboard. Screen lets you create designs or wireframes for your project, while Storyboard lets you create a story plan for the people who will be using your application.
Now for the sake of explanation, I would be creating a login form using Indigo Studio, see screenshot below:
The New Screen window has a toolbox on the Right hand side, having all sorts of possible user interface controls. I have added two Textlabels, for Name and for Password, and one Textbox to enter name and one to enter password.
You can add tools by simply dragging and dropping. It lets you rename the tools while adding. You can add further interactions to any of the tool content by simply right clicking on it. You can also change the properties like color, shape etc., of the tool. To run the prototype, simply click Run Screen button at the top of window; this file can be executed on any machine or mobile.
Indigo Studio offers cool animations like transitions from one state to another. You can tweak any screen to display next screen that you want to see after any user input, simply by clicking on “Change this Screen” button. Apart from that you can add user interactions on mouse click, mouse double click, mouse hovering, or on right click to let the control go to any other screen or web URL.
While creating Prototypes, it lets you take screenshots for documentation purpose, and also lets you zoom in and zoom out content.
Key Features of Indigo Studio
- A great tool for rapid prototype designing having various advance features.
- It lets you quickly understand the client requirement by providing you highly interactive and ready to use input tools.
- High quality prototype designs which can even be shared with clients.
- It lets you create Storyboards to incorporate real scenarios.
- It lets you add various interactions to navigate and for transition to another screen.
- Further it lets you add animated transitions.
- You can create Web, Desktop, and Mobile applications.
- It is free and easy to use.
- It has an intuitive user interface.
Also check out MockFlow, free wireframe mockup design software.
Verdict:
Indigo Studio is a great tool with unique features to create highly interactive prototypes to show to clients. Not just for desktop application, but it lets you create prototype for mobile and for web applications as well. It is based on Silverlight, so install Silverlight before installing Indigo Studio. It is an extremely useful application for budding developers.
