When comparing Origami vs FluidUI, the Slant community recommends Origami for most people. In the question“What are the best tools for prototyping mobile interactions/animations?” Origami is ranked 3rd while FluidUI is ranked 6th. The most important reason people chose Origami is:
Origami is offered to the public completely free, no monthly plans, no upfront cost whatsoever.
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Pros
Pro Completely free
Origami is offered to the public completely free, no monthly plans, no upfront cost whatsoever.
Pro Powerful animations and interactions
Origami was actually built to help Facebook designers work on Paper, one of Facebook's latest apps. Every animation that is coded into Origami was first made for Paper. It uses powerful 3D effects and some of the most advanced features for scrolling, tapping and swiping to create a faithful and interactive prototype.
Pro Native testing
Developers can develop their prototypes with origami through their desktops, but the testing itself is done on the native devices.
Pro No code required
Origami is built by designers for designers. As such, it allows for quick prototyping without writing a single line of code.
Pro Open source
Origami is free and open source and it is hosted on GitHub.
Pro Like only-Mac-integration! Great app! Thank you.
Pro User friendly
The learning curve is relatively low compared to other software that supports animations/transitions. Both building the wireframes and designing the interactions is all drop and drag.
Pro Tools for team collaboration
Work with your team on a design. Connect on live video calls and chat or add comments.
Pro Supports realistic gestures & transitions
You can simulate all the typical iOS gestures such as tap, double tap, swipe & long hold. These gestures then can trigger animated transitions such as sliding, fading, pop in, & flip. This enables you to create very realistic interactable demos of your app. Checkout the demo page for some examples.
Pro Awesome version control
Every action you or your team takes automatically creates a revision you can easily revert to.
Pro Provides UI assets from all the versions of iOS
The UI library is huge and very high quality. All the UI required to design iO7 apps is included as well as iOS 6 and basic wireframing elements. For example in iOS7 it provides:
- Backgrounds
- Navigation & status bars
- Layouts (list pickers, maps, keyboards, scroll etc)
- Controls
- Typography
- Icons
Pro Fast
Using the app is feels very snappy.
Pro Free forever for a single project & 10 screens
They have a very reasonable free tier with the paid versions starting at $12/month.
Pro Lets you test on an iPhone as well as in the browser
You can preview your designs live in the browser as well as send them to a mobile device to better simulate the UX.
Pro Makes it easy to plan out the app workflow
Fluid isn't just about wireframing static screens. You can plan out all the user flows and then define the transitions between them. This is really handy for planning out the entire user workflow.
Cons
Con Steep learning curve
Origami is a toolkit for Quartz Composer, and unfortunately the learning curve for it is quite steep. Especially for beginners.
Con Mac only
Since Origami is not an app in and on itself, but a plugin for Quartz Composer, which is built by Apple. Therefore, Origami is only available for Mac and for a developer to download and use it, they need to register as an Apple Developer.
Con Mouse driven interactions
There's no way to directly test the tactile interface.