Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Odds and ends, Reviews, Developer, iPhone, Graphic Design, SDK, iPod touch
Mega-super TUAW shootout of the iPhone UI sketchbooks
Part of my work requires me to mock up iPhone apps, often to show developers how I would redesign a user interface to work better than something they've come up with. Over the past few months, a number of paper sketchbooks have appeared on the market, all designed expressly for this purpose. I decided to try out all of the sketchbooks that I could find in a cursory Google search, just to see which one would work best for me. Of course, that meant that I had to write a review!The three products I discovered and tested were App Sketchbook (US$16.99), iPhone Application Sketch Book (US$14.99), and The Developer Sketchbook for iPhone Apps (US$19.99). All of them are designed for the same reason, to let iPhone devs or business analysts describe how they want an application's user interface to look. Follow along as I take a look at these three sketchbooks, as well as a metal stencil template for drawing UI elements.
The first sketchbook I purchased was App Sketchbook. Of the three products, this looks the most like an artist's sketchbook. It has a Wire-O binding so that the pages lay flat, and has double-sided pages with three iPhone templates on each side. Since there are 100 pages in the sketchbook, you can draw up to 600 iPhone screen diagrams.

The next sketchbook was a freebie at 360iDev Denver. The iPhone Application Sketch Book (below) has 100 double-sided pages featuring one iPhone template per page and a vast expanse of light blue-ruled graph paper surrounding each template on which you can write notes. While this sketchbook has predefined areas for the status bar (it shows the signal strength bars and battery icon) and home button row, the latter did not appear to be the correct number of pixels in height.

The final choice, The Developer Sketchbook, is a more typical book designed by Dave Woodridge of Electric Butterfly. I've been a happy user of Electric Butterfly's HelpLogic application, which is used to create help files for Mac and Windows programs. When I saw that Electric Butterfly was involved, I immediately made sure I could get a copy to look at.
When I say that this is a more typical book, what I'm saying is that it does not have a Wire-O binding -- instead, it's like a thick paperback book (see below). This, of course, makes it difficult to lay it out flat and use tools to assist in sketching. On the other hand, The Developer Sketchbook is the most useful of the three sketchbooks. Of the 500 pages, 100 are enlarged 320 x 480 grids for designing user interfaces in a portrait configuration, 100 pages are 480 x 320 grids for landscape design, there are 200 pages (the back sides of the grids, see below right) that are flowcharts for outlining the navigation of an app, and 100 pages of enlarged square grids for designing app icons.

The last item I'm going to write about isn't a sketchbook, but it is very useful when doing mockups of iPhone app UIs. It's the iPhone UI Stencil from Design Commission (US$16.95, see photo below), and not only do you get a very high quality metal stencil, but also a mechanical pencil (with eraser), a couple of Design Commission stickers, and downloadable iPhone templates in both letter and A4 sizes.

Whatever tools you happen to use to draw your dream iPhone apps, even if you just use a pen and a napkin, it's dreamers like you who are making the iPhone platform so incredibly useful.


![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)


Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
nickganga said 5:11PM on 10-03-2009
isn't it just easier to use something like omnigraffle?
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Craig Stanton said 5:36PM on 10-03-2009
or InterfaceBuilder
bayxsonic said 5:48PM on 10-03-2009
Or these Keynote templates: http://www.tuaw.com/2009/09/16/free-iphone-keynote-and-powerpoint-templates-help-get-you-from-t/
Martin said 8:09PM on 10-03-2009
And cheaper.
kiwamura said 12:44AM on 10-04-2009
Nope. In order for you to have "Omnigraffle" or even "keynotes" templates you need a computer i.e. a Mac. Regardless of how fast a computer run these days it still takes too long to open/boot-up. It's way quicker to draw your design from your mind and on to paper or even a napkin.
Designers understand this 'cos ideas come & go as "sell-able" ideas comes only in a glimpse of your thought and we forget them in just a few seconds. Most designers stare at their computer screen for hours looking for ideas when ideas can only be provoked only when IT wants to.
Plus computers need electricity.. this book only needs YOU and maybe a pencil.
JFMartin said 7:58PM on 10-04-2009
No, it is easier to use my template ! ;-)
Seriously, I find it cool to see this post but I think my template is worth noting too !
Have a look at this one: http://rfly.me/1w6
nickganga said 5:46PM on 10-03-2009
exactly
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yaniv said 9:04PM on 10-03-2009
Love it...
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Kirk said 10:38AM on 10-04-2009
Cool stencil
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Jeremy said 3:22AM on 10-09-2009
You forgot Notepods! http://www.notepod.net
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waaronw said 11:26PM on 10-04-2009
The "home button row" on the The iPhone Application Sketch isn't. I think it's for a segmented control strip - think of the buttons at the bottom of the screen when you're in the iPod app. It wouldn't be very useful to us developers to have the home button row delineated since, you know, those icons aren't there when you're inside an app. (It's arguable how useful it is to have a segmented control strip delineated on every page too, though.)
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