After a few months of private beta testing, the product design company ZURB is officially launching Solidify today, a tool that aims to help designers and developers to quickly create and test clickable prototypes of their websites and mobile applications. With Solidify, users can create these prototypes by linking together their existing sketches, wireframes or mockups. That’s just the first step, though. The real focus of Solidify is on testing these interfaces with real users at any phase of development.
This, says ZURB, will help users make user testing a more integral part of their design process. Traditional user testing, the company argues, is often time-consuming and disorganized. Instead of trying to organize focus groups or holding meetings to figure out untested details of a new product, Solidify can help its users get structured feedback for how real users interact with their ideas.
As these clickable prototypes are based on mockups, there is no limit to which screen sizes you can test with the service. Testers can also try your prototypes on mobile devices.
Designers can send their prototypes to ZURB’s network of testers or select their own. The product comes with an in-depth analytics tool that will allow designers to spot problems with their interactive designs early on. Here is an example of what these tests can look like.
It’s worth noting that ZURB does not offer its own mockup tool, but it can obviously import image files from third-party tools like Balsamiq. As it works with all popular image formats, you can also just take images of your own hand-drawn sketches and work with those.
ZURB offers a limited free plan to test the app. There is also a basic paid version ($19/month), which allows for unlimited prototyping and includes mobile testing and unlimited results. There is also a more fully featured version for $49/month that gives users the ability to get demographics reports and custom PDF reports, as well as the ability to customize their logo.
ZURB is a close-knit team of product designers who help companies design better websites, services and online products. The team has worked with over 200 startups since 1998, generating more than $1 billion dollars in market capitalization. ZURB’s clients have included Facebook, Yahoo!, Trapit, Zazzle, Netflix, Salesforce, Reuters and McAfee, among many others. Their client services include Design Strategy (project definition), Interaction Design (project framing) and Implementation. ZURB also has several apps which help users quickly design great products through...
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