I’m using Sparkle more and more for wireframing and mockups which when the client is totally happy with it and signs-off, it progresses into the fully built out website and I haven’t left the app! I can’t stress enough the simplicity and intuitiveness of this fantastic app and how I get things done - FAST!
I have a new Money Coach client and I have gone from a wireframe sketch to a low-fidelity mockup in less that a working day and as I type they are going through it and giving feedback! You can see where this is going… a fully working and multi-faceted website built in a week and I have the client purchasing Sparkle if they want to do future edits to the site when it is live.
[I’m sharing this to give you all an idea how versatile Sparkle is for us web designers! and client’s today are expecting more and more a visual interactive mockup to get a feel for what is going up before we build it out for them.]
Anecdote: before Sparkle 1.0 was released, and up to the last week or two before release, Sparkle had a “wireframe” mode.
You would click on the wireframe button in the toolbar, and all text would turn to the redacted “squiggles”, and colors would switch to the blue hues.
You would switch to wireframe mode to show the site to the client and get a feedback about layout and composition rather than on specific copy, color or images choices.
It was perhaps more of a designer feature and we couldn’t easily explain it to our early users, it was incomplete so we cut it to make the 1.0 deadline we had.
But to this day that’s why elements you add to the canvas have the placeholder/mock/wireframe look and color to them.
And now it makes sense in how it was a feature but not followed through on for the reasons you mentioned. But I’m very very very happy that you left some of the elements baked into Sparkle because it is helping me with my workflow so much and in the end allowing for a far better client/designer workflow and “forward moving online business” relationship!
You know the more I get to hear your story the more I know that you and Daniela are really forward thinkers in the web design industry and that just has to be all-out appreciated!
This is awesome. I’m doing something similar, but using Sparkle to close clients.
I build just the hero / header / menu section of the website as a a preview of how their site could look if they hire me. Very effective to show them something that takes ~30 - 60 minutes to put together and close a deal.
@WebRoyal, You’re welcome! I’ve had far more success with this method to assure the layout of the website and where all the bits need to go. I then have the client sign-off on it allowing me to get on with tuning it into a high-fidelity mockup leading onto the build-out of the site!
that is really a good idea, I have to try it also in one of my next projects. In fact Sketch is sure a good program, but everytime I start again with sketch I have to watch first some tutorials and this takes always time.
