Posted by Michael Alfaro on July 23, 2010

HotGloo – Collaborative Wireframing

The other day I did a Google search for ‘cloud-based wireframing tools’ and I somehow found HotGloo. Having gone through the ‘wireframing ropes’ (hacking my way through wireframes on Illustrator before finding Omnigraffle, and now searching for the next best thing…) I was intrigued. What makes HotGloo different from other tools out there:

• Truly collaborative – You can setup multiple projects where different people can be online collaborating and adding things in realtime
• No software to download – everything is browser-based (I know there are some browser-based IA tools, but none that I have found that focus on the wireframing process)
• No need to backup – it’s all done for you

Some of the things I am leery about are minor, but still important when you need to produce production ready documents, such as:

• Custom stencils – Time spent on uploading custom images / stencils – this isn’t as easy as Omnigraffle
• PDF export – HotGloo has a ‘one button’ function, and I can’t seem to add variables like I do in Omnigraffle (such as page numbers, dates, etc.)
• Learning curve – Learning curve might be steep for making clickable interactions amongst all collaborators, and cut into billable hours.

Basically, I wonder how production-ready it is. I’d like to try it out on a smaller project and see how the collaborative-process truly holds up.

The Webshop Trilogy: How to wireframe your own webshop (Part1) from HotGloo on Vimeo.