Quick and Easy Design Prototyping | Origami Studio Review

High-fidelity prototyping is no strange topic in the design world and such is the case of most tools utilized in the process. Today, the user experience applications market has seen significant improvements in the recent years with more and more arrivals coming into the fray. Well, at a time when designers and developers are more into practical, interactive, and fast touch prototyping, Origami Studio has stood out for many.

What is Origami Studio?

Origami is a tool built by Facebook and is categorically meant for designing modern interfaces. In the beginning, they worked with Quartz Composer produced for day to day use by the Company’s own team of designers. In 2013 they let it out for the rest of the design community. Considering the first version was not well-equipped for prototyping, Facebook launched Origami Studio to enhance the original tool’s performing environment. Origami allows users to iterate and test concepts, easily develop prototypes with layers, build flows, come up with new interactions, and collaborate in the design process with no limitation. With this tool, you can work with more speed in building detailed interfaces whether you are an expert in the niche or not.

Origami Features

Design with layers

Origami Studio layers panel lets users have a familiar view of the components they are working with, as in Sketch or Photoshop. It is no big deal to develop prototypes with layers. You can reproduce layers from your sketch document through copy and paste and from that, you can embark on building your prototype.

Reuse components

The tool offers pre-built material and iOS components that designers can leverage on to hasten their work without much effort. Similarly, individuals or teams can create libraries from where they can store design elements for reuse in case a need arises.

Build interactions

Origami is engineered to help designers and other creatives explore their maximum potential in design projects. With availed patches, you can explore and iterate visually faster not to mention the ability to build flows and author new interactions.

Previewing

Origami Live for Android and Origami Live for iOS gives users the ability to preview their prototypes live. As you make changes in your work, you get to see them in real time consequently making it easy to test prototype and fine-tune the results. You can use a USB or Wi-Fi to connect to a device for the preview.

Sketch Integration

Origami comes as the perfect companion to Sketch considering it allows direct copy and paste of Sketch’s native layers into Origami Studio. The properties of layers or any other component sourced from Sketch can be modified without getting back to the source.

Screen Interoperability

With Origami it is possible to function with almost every other existing screen format. Whether it’s preset for browser windows, Android devices, iOS, iPhone or even smartwatches it accepts it all. This makes it hassle-free to test and present designs when and where it matters.

Interactive design drafts

Any accomplished designer or developer will tell you how difficult it can get when it comes to displaying interactions and animations. Converting sheer design drafts to an app or interactive website is no pushover more particularly if you have to harmonize different components of the design.  With Origami Studio chances of any confusion arising are eliminated so you can present your work in a simple way that can be understood even by amateurs in the field.

Native platforms support

Origami Studio supports mobile OS elements such as device orientation, microphone, camera, accelerometer, gyroscope, vibration and Haptic Feedback.

Present and share

Just like many other tools Origami allows designers to show their works in full-screen presentations on different devices. You can also share the prototypes with others with the Origami live on their mobile device.

Support

While most users of design tools do not pay attention to the support feature, the significance of a robust framework to help individuals take full advantage of an app cannot be stressed enough. Origami by many standards outshines alternative tools with a robust combination of examples, documents, and active community around it. You can easily get started by perusing relevant content available online, downloading use guidelines or seeking feedback from others.

Pros:

• Has a powerful set of features ideal for interactive prototyping
• The user interface is intuitive and self-explanatory
• It is easy to get started on Origami
• Avails loads of native components

Cons:

• Serves best only for less complex high-fidelity prototypes

Pricing

The tool is available for free for all platforms. To give it a test run, hit up the link below.