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Friday, November 23, 2012

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.

Engineering disciplines & skills needed for UIEs


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

Axure RP

InVision

Mockingbird

Balsamiq Mockups

Ratchet

Justinmind

HotGloo

FlairBuilder

Mockflow

mocklinkr

Mockabilly

moqups

AppMockupTools

WireframeSketcher

JustProto

Napkee

ForeUI

Jumpchart

Protoshare

iPhoneMockup

Lumzy

Pidoco

Proto.io

AnteType

AppSketcher

MockupBuilder

PowerMockup

AppCooker

Tiggzi

iPlotz

Serena

fluidIA

FrameBox

Naview

DENIM

UIreframe.com

GUI Machine

inPreso Screens

UXPin

SoftAndGUI

Notism

MockupScreens

MockupTiger

JotForm

Keynotopia

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/