15 UX and UI Tools for Designers

If you find yourself spending way too much time prototyping your next big design, you may need to take a step back and evaluate the tools and resources you have at hand. There is no reason to stick to the same wire-framing or prototyping tool when new and improved UX tools and UI resources are added ever so often on the Web. Work faster, better and smarter with more powerful tools and fresher UI kits.

To help you with that, we have here 15 UX and UI tools that are great for prototyping. Some of them carry drag-and-drop functionalities and powerful team collaboration features, while others contain great resources for testing your design’s usability within the development phase and in some cases, in real-time.

Mockup Design Tool

Mockplus is a simple yet powerful UX prototyping design tool. It can help create your brilliant prototypes just in minutes, free of coding, training and programming. The drag-and-drop make you set pages interactive links easily and quickly. You can import image directly from Google and Flickr without downing it to the local. Besides, previewing your work on the iPhone makes it pretty cool. Life is too short to spend time and money on bad software. Take Mockplus for a free trial to focus on your design itself.

Antetype

Antetype was developed by UI designers and provides all the tools you need to design rich, hi-fidelity prototypes. More than 400 widgets are available for all major platforms, but you still have the option to add additional widgets, including your own. Integrated interaction and annotation features allow you to demonstrate ongoing design work, and make comments and feedback available to team members and stakeholders.

Usability Tools

Usability Tools provides two sets of useful tools to test the usability of your app. One set identifies usability issues on the fly, and tells you which features of your app draws the attention of your visitors and which features that are ignored. The second set provides user feedback relating to the look and feel of your app. Both sets offer a variety of testing options.

Myna

Myna brings to the table a form of A/B testing that learns in real time as you test. It optimizes your tests on the fly, enabling your best designs to be seen by more of your customers or potential customers. Tests are conducted based on your individual visitors, not individual page views. Test results are quickly available, and Myna even allows you to make changes to your design while testing is in progress.

PowerMockup

PowerMockup is a useful prototyping tool that features a unique twist. This tool provides the necessary wire-framing templates and functionality, but it enables the actual wire-framing to be done on PowerPoint. This makes it possible for end users and non-technical participants to more easily follow the design process. PowerMockup iterates and redefines designs in real time, while remaining focused on the usability of the end product.

Notism

Notism features a UX capability that allows design events and progress to be shared with remarkable ease, and in real time. This translates into more rapid design iterations, less time required for sign-offs, and a streamlined usability testing process. The most significant feature Notism brings to the table is the capability to collaborate with others by video, a feature regarded by some as a true game-changer.

Optimizely

Optimizely is an optimization platform offering fast and powerful A/B testing for mobile apps. A visual editor allows visual changes to be made to your app in real time and on the fly without waiting for App Store review, no matter how customized it may be. A single line of code, generated by Optimizely, and inserted into your HTML is the only coding that is necessary.

Prott

Prott is a powerful rapid prototyping and collaboration tool especially designed for creating mobile apps. Graphics, sketches, and images can easily be animated, screens can be sync’ed together, and the resulting prototype can be previewed on a real device and shared with team members for collective feedback. iOS and Android screen resolutions and sizes are fully supported.

User Testing

User Testing is a user research platform that can be used to test either released or unreleased mobile apps on iOS and Android devices. User Testing will design a test for you, or you can design a test yourself. You can run the test in minutes, and have the results within an hour. The cool thing about this is that feedback is not only in the form of metrics but also videos of real people commenting on the usability of your app.

Ace IOS 8 Mobile UI Kit

The Ace Module UI Kit is well organized and ready to use to mock up iOS 8 mobile app designs for the benefit of the end user. With 75 PSD templates and more than 100 icons at the designer’s disposal, iPhone app design is easier than ever. The screens available in the kit allow over 1000 different apps to be created. The templates are created for Retina HD 4.7 size, and are a perfect match for creating stunning apps on iPhone 6.

InVision

InVision provides a prototyping, collaboration, and workflow platform suitable for applications in a design-driven environment. It easily and rapidly transforms static screens into interactive prototypes. Its drag-and-drop functionality makes rapid prototyping during any development phase. The information features that have been incorporated into this tool make real-time design presentation, collaboration, and conveniently-displayed feedback a reality.

Firefly

Firefly is a highly practical app development tool that features a useful combination of design, data management, and collaboration functions, great for organizations with widely dispersed development teams. With Firefly, it is possible to upload mockups, app designs, images, and even entire web pages during the design process. This tool has the ability to manage multiple design versions, while allowing collaborators to be brought into the picture at any time during the design process for information sharing purposes.

AppCooker

With the advanced features AppCooker brings to the table, you will save time, money, and impress your clients, while designing and sharing beautiful iPhone and iPad mockups through the use of native iOS widgets. Don’t have the time to create a mockup from scratch? Then, AppCooker is the app for you.

Vonn Mobile Material Design UI Kit

The Vonn Material Design UI Kit by Visual Hierarchy features 100 beautiful drag-and-drop UI templates in 8 categories, all perfect for creating Android apps. The templates are designed at 1920×1080 pixels to provide a perfect fit on a mobile device. No coding needed. The Vonn UI Kit is fully compatible with Google’s material design guidelines for style and layout.

Pidoco

Create clickable wire-frames quickly and easily with Pidoco’s drag-and-drop feature, then create, edit and share an unlimited number of wire-frame mockups or prototypes with team members and clients in real time. Its powerful feedback and discussion functions makes for great and easy collaboration. Save your customized templates for reuse later on, and test your prototypes on your favorite mobile devices.

Proto.Io

You can create your prototypes on the browser via drag-and-drop and zero-code with Proto.io, and on top of that apply multiple touch and mouse events to any UI element. Proto.io also carries one of the most realistic and useful interactive UI libraries you will find in any prototyping tool. Test your prototype on an actual device and discuss your design-related info with team members with its collaboration tool.