Interaction12 Blog
Learn Axure for free? Sign me up!
We’re all interaction designers here, so we can be honest with one another… Diagramming, layout, and image editing tools are becoming increasingly difficult to use to describe the behaviors of the systems we design. Better technology, new interaction models, and more experienced users allow and even require us to refine and describe this behavior at a much more intricate level. These new opportunities also give us new and spectacular ways to fail. Prototyping has become an essential part of effective interaction design for this new world. Fortunately, new tools have evolved to help designers prototype easily.
Axure is one of the big guns. Because it can do so much it can also be intimidating to learn. But if you’re an Interaction12 attendee, you’re in luck (well, in MORE luck… you’re already going to an awesome conference)! I’ve been using Axure since 2005, teaching it since 2007, and I’ll be giving a free (as in TOTALLY FREE!) three-hour introductory workshop on Wednesday, February 1 at 1:30pm! If you’ve ever wanted to learn it, now’s your chance.
Now, I won’t be able to cover everything (that takes two and-a-half days), but I will cover a few big topics. First I’ll introduce you to Axure’s basic concepts and orient you to its user interface. Next we’ll talk about wireframing in Axure. This includes setting up grids and page formatting, laying out and formatting wireframe elements, and using a feature called Masters to make you efficient. You will, of course, be building your own wireframe as you go. In the next section you’ll make it interactive. You’ll make it do simple things like linking to pages and slick new things like on-page tabs and dynamically adding items to a list.
Please keep in mind that this workshop is for absolute Axure beginners. If you’ve been using Axure for some time and you want to do stuff that is Really Awesome, I encourage you to sign up for my other workshop. Jeff Harrison and I are co-presenting Prototyping Native Mobile Apps in Axure, in which you’ll learn how to prototype native mobile apps that even enjoy limited gesture support on mobile devices.
See you in Dublin!