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I just read an article about Google Drawing (part of Google Docs) and how useful it is for wireframing.

Do you have experience with Google Drawing for wireframes, that could give feedback on how useful it is?

(This article also happens to have some stencils / templates for wireframing)

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  • it is pretty slow and completely depended on your internet connection speed. Still exploring the tool Jun 4, 2012 at 12:58

3 Answers 3

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I have limited experience with this but I'd say that if collaboration across networks is something you really need, then it's not a bad solution.

Alternatively, there's Cacoo, but that does require a new account setup and as the Morten Just article correctly points out, a major advantage of using Google is that it's fairly ubiquitous.

That said, while it's possible to create fine lookin' wireframes with the Google drawing tool, it hasn't been designed with that in mind - it doesn't feature interactions or masters/pages for example - so it's no replacement for a prototyping tool.

One feature of Google Docs that distinguishes this from the alternatives is that documents can be submitted to a template library, so there's the potential to build up a community-driven repository of wireframes. Would that be a good thing? That's a whole other question.

For collaboration, great.

For everything else, not so great... yet.

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  • I definitely agree on the collaboration point... it would be amazing to have a few hands in there at the same time, giving instant feedback... or else, it may be horrible...? (too many cooks in the kitchen?)
    – jffgrdnr
    Aug 11, 2010 at 18:11
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I found it to be quite limited in my brief experience with Google Drawing. It would be much easier to draw on the back of a napkin and snap a picture on your iPhone than wrestle with the current version.

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I've played around with it a few times. I think the collaboration aspect is probably the best thing about it. People have started to make templates that contain a lot of commonly used prototyping objects. As you said the community aspect of it could be great, but the actual tool itself is fairly limited at the moment.

I think I will continue to use it for basic prototyping jobs and keep an eye on how the tool and the community progresses.

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