30 minutes with Craft Prototype
Prototyping inside Sketch
Invision acquired Silverflows and in a month’s time they’ve opened their Private Beta for designers to play with. I was fortunate enough to be invited to the beta (thanks to Sem Schilder) and it has been my favorite, first experience with a prototyping tool.
At FarmLogs we’re constantly debating over the utility of our prototyping tools. While we love the ability to create authentic interactions in “Principle”, we lament the fact that there isn’t a “clean” way to share feedback (à la Invision). Additionally, we’ve found consistency issues in taking our prototyping workflows outside the “Sketch” environment.
Craft-Prototype, fortunately, answered our prayers by adding easy-to-use tools within the Sketch environment that also allow access to common iOS functionalities (Camera, SMS, Photos) which is remarkably powerful for a beta release.
Five Actions
Craft has provided five actions to further improve your interactive prototypes.
- Fixed Header: Allows you to set a static layer within a view (ex. headers and navigation bars)
- Fixed Footer: Allows for you to set a layer fixed at the screen-bottom, again usually for nav bars.
- Web View: Allows you to load any webpage within the prototype, which opens up in responsive version. You can also embed Youtube, Google maps, webpage, vimeo, or anything with a iFrame. (Just realized you can actually write in custom HTML as well!)
- Input Field: The input field allows you to create input fields with placeholders and input type like email, password, single line and multi line text.
- Links (C): They allow you to connect Art boards with different prebuilt Animations (Towards Left, Right, Bottom, Top, Dissolve & Instant) and use art boards as modals, with just a check box. Link also allows you to perform the iOS functions of Calling, SMS, Camera, Mail, Photo Gallery.
Sketch Prototype
My final prototype is just a glimpse of the awesomeness possible within Craft Prototype.
After 30 minutes of diving straight into Craft-Prototype, each feature seems easy to explore and use. I’m excited for the official release of Prototype, since this tool will be a must have for all designers.
Sid is a Product Design Intern at FarmLogs, and studying at the School of Information, University of Michigan specializing in Human Computer Interaction.
