An Ideal Screen Wireframing Tool
I am an interaction designer and my job is to create lots of screen flows and wireframes for software web applications.
I use powerpoint as my prototyping tool as its easier for the client to review and comment. ppt is very flexible but not designed to support prototyping. Visio is something that the clients do not have typically. So here goes the dream -
My ideal prototyping tool would have -
1. A library to store my widgets and templates - Most of the times I just copy paste the widgets I used in previous projects. I would like the application to identify and save these automatically.
2. Automatic Linking of Screens - The application could use my IA diagram and create a structure of pages automatically for me to work on.
3. A comment and review section - Each screen should have its own discussion place and pointers can be used to point things out on the screen. Reminders could be sent to reviewers who have not yet approved the screens.
4. Change at one place only - If I change the name of a link, label, button, then it should automatically reflect on all occurring places.
5. Ability to test it in the browser of choice - I should be able to test it in various browsers to see how it fares.
6. Suggestion of screen resolution - It should tell me what would be the best resolution for a certain browser and size of computer screen and other specifications.
7. Automatic Accessibility Accommodation - It should automatically accommodate accessibility considerations and notify the user wherever it is violated.
8. Web-based - So as to easily share it with stakeholders and peers. Anything new should be notified to the respective people. it could be downloaded anytime.
9. Automatic checking of standards and guidelines - I should be able to feed in the standards and guidelines and it should check these while I prototype and suggest an auto-correction.
10. Auto- generation of HTML - Finally my favorite feature :D!! .... It should generate HTML according to the standards and save all the donkeys from this work.
I believe that all this stuff is something we can out-source it to the machine and concentrate on the concept and ideas.
These features can be overridden at any point of time though. But really it saves so much of work. It we have a computer then might as well use it.