How to prototype an app directly on your iPhone
Scott Savarie takes you through prototyping an app design using free tool Napkin.
04. Getting circles
In this mock-up we're going to use a circular avatar. To get a circle with images or rectangles all you have to do is make a square and then slide the corner radius slider all the way to the right. Repeat step four, grab a photo of yourself from your camera roll and crop it to a circle.
05. Adding Text and Duplicating
Adding text to the canvas works as you would expect at this point. Add it from the sidebar menu, and then double tap to edit it. The text field at the bottom of the editing controls will bring up the keyboard and let you change the text inside.
Once you position your text and have the size, weight, alignment and color you want, tap the label with two fingers to duplicate it. You can do this action on any shape to duplicate it. Change the text and font size here to be a subline. I used my job title, Product Designer.
06. Adding Icons
You can add icons from the sidebar menu and edit their properties just like you can with any other layer. The app comes with a bunch of common icons from the FontAwesome library. For this mock lets pick a search icon, change the color to white and position it in the top left.
07. Finishing Off
To finish off I'm going to add another rectangle to the canvas which will be a container for content. Set the color to white and give it a slight drop shadow.
At this point you can keep going and adding more layers to the canvas to make your mock more and more detailed, or you can treat it as a quick sketch of an idea which you'll take with your to the computer to finish off.
The more layers you add to the canvas, the more you'll want to start locking layers (you can do this by tapping the lock icon whenever you double tap a shape). Whenever you're finished, or want to start sketching a new idea, just take a screenshot, then you can clear the canvas from the sidebar menu.
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Words: Scott Savarie
Scott Savarie is a Product Designer at Facebook. Follow him on Twitter at @ScottSavarie.
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