Mockup Designer

Before a product reaches the building phase, it needs to go through various design processes, with some scenarios also requiring some sort of preview. This is mostly done through a mockup, which is a representation of the actual product. Software components make no exception, with applications such as Mockup Designer letting you build a fake interface for your products for the sake of display.

In terms of design, the application is pretty intuitive, with an office like interface that quickly gets you up and running. The upper toolbar holds most options, which pile up as a few arrangement controls, while side panels provide quick access to objects you work with and corresponding properties.

The amount of time it takes to build a project only depends on the complexity of your project. You only get to drag elements from the corresponding categories over the workspace and arrange them as you see fit. It's possible to resize each object, regardless of its type, either by dragging its borders around or modifying specific values.

There is a rich library of elements you can import, organized in categories like controls, containers, data, menus and shapes. Sadly, there's only a sketchy representation, with no possibility to modify the visual aspect of elements.

On the other hand, these are custom built to mimic specialized objects like menus, text fields, buttons, tabs and more. However, text displayed in the corresponding box can be fully modified to create slightly more complex designs.

The application gives you the possibility to create new categories and save custom objects for later use. Moreover, you can attribute metadata to each object, either by filling in fields or importing from CSV files.

Don't expect your design to actually be functional, since it's only a mockup. Sadly, export options are limited to saving an image of your design, XML files or metadata under the CSV format. It would have been nice at least to generate a preview with interactive menus and buttons for better representation.

All things considered, we can safely state that Mockup Designer is far from being amongst the best of its kind, with a shallow set of features overall, a few export options and no possibility to trigger an interactive preview. On the other hand, the visual design and ease of use help tip the scales in its favor, serving as a suitable environment for rough or early stage design mockups.