User Interface Engineering Disciplines & Skills

One of the first things I did when I joined PayPal was rename the "webdev" to "User Interface Engineering". Now while there is nothing wrong with the title web developer, at PayPal webdevs were considered one step below a "dev".

Changing a title in itself is fairly meaningless. But at the same time names are powerful. Over the last year I believe we have been really growing into the title. Recently I started sketching all of the engineering disciplines as well as web development skills needed for this role. Here is the diagram I created.

Here is an accessible version of the diagram above.

One of our next steps is to flesh out curricula that ties to the diagram above. We are calling this courseware "Bring Design to Life University" since our job as UIEs is to bring great design to life.

List of Mockup/Prototyping Tools

Started keeping a list of these tools. No particular order.

Creately

http://creately.com/

Axure RP

http://axure.com/

InVision

http://www.InVisionApp.com

Mockingbird

https://gomockingbird.com/

Balsamiq Mockups

http://balsamiq.com/products/mockups

Ratchet

http://maker.github.com/ratchet/

Justinmind

http://www.justinmind.com/

HotGloo

http://www.hotgloo.com/

FlairBuilder

http://www.flairbuilder.com/

Mockflow

http://www.mockflow.com/

mocklinkr

http://www.mocklinkr.com/

Mockabilly

http://www.mockabilly.com/

moqups

https://moqups.com/#!/

AppMockupTools

http://www.appmockuptools.com/

WireframeSketcher

http://wireframesketcher.com/

JustProto

http://www.justproto.com/

Napkee

http://www.napkee.com/

ForeUI

http://www.foreui.com/

Jumpchart

http://jumpchart.com/

Protoshare

http://www.protoshare.com/

iPhoneMockup

http://iphonemockup.lkmc.ch/

Lumzy

http://www.lumzy.com/

Pidoco

https://pidoco.com/

Proto.io

http://proto.io

AnteType

http://antetype.com

AppSketcher

http://appsketcher.com

MockupBuilder

http://mockupbuilder.com

PowerMockup

http://powermockup.com

AppCooker

http://www.appcooker.com/Overview.php

Tiggzi

http://tiggzi.com/home

iPlotz

http://iplotz.com/whatisiPlotz.php

Serena

http://www.serena.com/products/prototype-composer/index.html

fluidIA

http://www.fluidia.org/

FrameBox

http://framebox.org/ECIN

Naview

http://www.naviewapp.com/

DENIM

http://dub.washington.edu:2007/projects/denim/

UIreframe.com

http://uireframe.com/app/

GUI Machine

http://gui-machine.com/

inPreso Screens

http://www.inpreso.com/inpresoscreens/

UXPin

http://uxpin.com/

SoftAndGUI

http://www.softandgui.co.uk/

Notism

https://www.notismapp.com/home

MockupScreens

http://www.mockupscreens.com/index.php?page=Screen-Prototypes

MockupTiger

http://www.mockuptiger.com/

JotForm

http://www.jotform.com/

Keynotopia

http://keynotopia.com/

Handcraft

http://handcraft.com/

Added after original publishing of this article:

LucidChart
http://www.lucidchart.com

Twitter Bootstrap
http://twitter.github.com/bootstrap/

JetStrap
http://jetstrap.com/