centre{source}

At CentreSource, we include planning and/or strategy in every interactive and web project we begin.  The goal of this on-the-forefront project work is to assess the estimated scope, timeline, and budget as discussed during the sales meetings and re-evaluate it through a more refined lens.  Very often, this refining perspective is comprised of an interactive HTML prototype developed using Axure RP Pro.

While many projects can be successfully planned using by-hand sketches (and our simplest ‘portfolio’ sites are, in fact, prototyped this way), as the complexity of the desired user experience increases, so too increases the value of an online, “clickable” prototype rendition.  Axure RP’s integrated development environment (IDE) makes it quick and easy to create such prototypes.

I was recently recommended Protoshare by some of the team here at c{s} and tasked with giving it a thorough look-through. I browsed the online docs, signed up for an account, and played around with it – here are the results of my digging:

Initial Thoughts:

Protoshare is tailor-made for what we do. I can’t ignore this – it seems almost too good to be true. Naturally, I was suspicious at first. My initial, gut reaction was “this is TOO simplistic. We’ve spent time refining our plans so they cop Drupal/slideshowpro/symfony to a T. This is a great idea, but one that probably lacks the finesse (extensibility, documentation, community) to be viable.” Well, I’m happy to announce that at least some of these fears have been assuaged (but not all).