The Price of Prototyping Tools
Locally, there are passionate fans of iRise and Axure. Personally, I haven’t used either – too many deal breakers on both sides.
The latest deal breaker, iRise Files Patent Infringement Lawsuit Against Axure Software Solutions 10 weeks after it receives a software patent (a questionable idea itself). Awesome.
Let’s say, iRise wins: eradicating Axure and leaving it’s customers without an ongoing supported tool. Think those customers will purchase licenses from the company that killed the tool they selected?
Me neither.
Feels like Adobe & Macromedia Redux, and I’m not happy with how that turned out.
I think I’ll stick with napkin sketches and HTML, kthxbye.
6 Comments
Wish you could have seen it
On Wednesday, with an iRise Sales Rep:
Me: “Give me your 2 minute why iRise versus Axure.”
Rep: “Well first, we just filed a patent infringement lawsuit against them…”
In terms of whether Axure clients would consider buying iRise after eradication – not sure they even could. The price points are apple and oranges – or cadillacs and kias.
Lastly, I keep wondering if as we become more agile – truly, and are able to have working prototypes within weeks of project initiation if these tools like iRise (which don’t produce any code) will become shelfware.
Nicole, re: agile-ness removing the usefulness of these stand-alone prototypes, I completely agree.
A *LAWSUIT*???? That is so ridiculous. Our community is very small and typially we all play well together. This is just *bad business practice.* Axure is kicking their asses because it’s good and it’s affordable, so out of spite they try (in an absolutely crazy fashion) to sue Axure out of business. There are other ways to be competitive. Jerkwads.
While I am admittedly an Axure fanboy, I have had no problems recommending iRise over Axure when the situation warrants it. But now that is over. I wouldn’t recommend to clients that they work with a company that practices business in this way.
Regarding Agile… Aren’t working prototypes expensive? You have to retain additional coders to manage them. Plus, making changes has got to be slower than making changes on a wireframe and regenerating. As far as I’m concerned, a prototype is the designer’s playroom. It’s where we can fail merrily until we get it right. Failure becomes less of an option when a) you’re dealing with code and b) that code will end up in production
Fred, working, easy-to-modify, html & javascript prototypes _can_ be expensive. But considering the price of either of these tools, I’d put it about even.
@Fred: You better step back from your computer if you’re going to stick with that plan of avoiding products in a patent law fight. After all, IP is much bigger than UX. Let’s not be too self-centered about UX community being the turf for this fight.
Now, as a person who is inbetween prototyping tools
, I’m happy to be reading “Sketching User Experiences” by Buxton and having Dan Brown’s Deliverables book in hand. I might just join GvB and use paper.
Jay:
It’d be great (if your willing) if you’d post a review of said book!