FREEFORM
Hand sketching first designs of user interfaces is quicker and easier than creating them with a form builder. We also feel less committed to a hand-drawn design than a formal diagram that looks 'finished'. Because we are less committed we are more likely to explore a variety of ideas and change the design. You can download a free copy of Freeform2 from here. You must have VB6 installed before you install Freeform2. Further Instructions are included in the download package.
Freeform2 provides a pen based interface for drawing user interface forms and then then interacting with the design while it is rendered as a sketch. Freeform runs as a Visual Basic 6 add-in and can recognise the sketched form components and convert them into a VB form.
Screenshots of the FreeForm software
Publications
Paper Publications
- Plimmer, B. and Apperley, M. (2004). INTERACTING with sketched interface designs: an evaluation study. CHI 2004 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems - Vienna, Austria.
- Plimmer, B. and Apperley, M. (2003). Evaluating a sketch environment for novice programmers. CHI 2003 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems - Florida, USA.
- Plimmer, B. and Apperley, M. (2003). Freeform: A Tool for Sketching Form Designs. BHCI - Bath.
- Plimmer, B. and Apperley, M. (2002). Computer-aided sketching to capture preliminary design. Proceedings of the 3rd Australasian Conference on User interfaces - Darlinghurst, Australia, 9-12.
- Plimmer, B. and Apperley, M. (2002). Freeform: An informal environment for interface prototyping. Proceedings of the SIGCHI-NZ Symposium on Human Computer Interaction - Hamilton, New Zealand, 11-12.
Other Publications
- Plimmer, B. (2004). Using Shared Displays to Support Group Design; A Study of the Use of Informal User Interface Designs when Learning to Program. PhD Thesis, University of Auckland