A Review of Milestones in the History of GUI Prototyping Tools

Abstract

Prototyping is one of the core activities of User-Centered Design (UCD) processes and an integral component of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) research. Nonetheless, for many years, prototyping was synonym of paper-based mock-ups and only more recently we can say that dedicated tools for supporting prototyping activities really reach the market. In this paper we propose to analyze the evolution of prototyping tools proposed by the academic community to support research activities and prototyping tools that are aimed and improve the development process of commercial user interfaces. Thus, this paper presents a review of past and current graphical user interface prototyping tools, in order to set up the state of the art in this field, observing fundamental milestones of features over time. For that, we have screened publications presented since 1988 in some of the main HCI conferences and 113 commercial tools available on the web. The results enable a brief comparison of characteristics present in both academic and commercial tools, how they have evolved and what are the gaps that can provide insights for future research and development.