A plug for OmniGraffle

I am learning a lot about designing interfaces this summer through working on DrProject. I've dabbled with interface design before by creating a few paper prototypes, wireframes in Visio, and free form design of a game and some website screenshots from within OmniGraffle, a great multi-purpose diagramming tool for OS X. Although I am relatively new to both Macs and interface design, I've really picked up OmniGraffle over the past year. I've found it to be easy to use and enjoyable. I guess that like most interface designers, I've found my favorite prototyping software and I'm sticking to it, for now.

OmniGraffle comes with "stencils" which are shapes and symbols that you can drag and drop onto the canvas. (Graffletopia is a great resource for stencils.) In addition, you can create multiple canvases within one document, and have one or more "Master" canvases that can be used to include elements from one canvas as the beginning for multiple canvases. You can also link from any OmniGraffle object to a website or a different canvas. This lets you export the entire document as a clickable prototype. (Be sure to select Entire Document in the export options if you try this.)

Here are a few resources if you're interested in prototyping interfaces with OmniGraffle:

Graffletopia User Interface stencils

How to create clickable HTML image map or PDF prototypes using OmniGraffle

Yahoo design patterns provides an easy package of 16 stencil sets, but it is also a great resource for thinking about and learning about conventions for design patterns, like breadcrumbs.

My design process has pretty much been like this:

• Talking with developers about requirements and design decisions


• Brainstorming more concretely by mocking up ideas in OmniGraffle


• Questioning my assumptions and thinking about the interface from a new user's point of view.

I think I've also been using the design principles and other less tangible knowledge I've learned from classes and readings. So far this summer, I've read Steve Krug's Don't Make Me Think and I'm working on Morville and Rosenfeld's Information Architecture. Once I'm past my big deadline for my job at Clearsighted, I hope to spend even more time reading.

(You can also find this post on my DrProject blog.)