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Dynamic Prototyping with SketchFlow in Expression Blend: Sketch Your Ideas...And Bring Them to Life! 1st Edition, Kindle Edition

by Chris Bernard (Author), Sara Summers (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
3.3 3.3 out of 5 stars 17 ratings
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This book is for designers, user experience pros, creative directors, developers, or anyone who wants to create rich, interactive, and compelling products. If you want to communicate innovative ideas, research, experiment, and prototype in the language of the interface, Dynamic Prototyping with SketchFlow in Expression Blend is the perfect text. Learn how to sketch, iterate, and validate ideas—utilizing the power and productivity within SketchFlow.

Previous page
  1. ISBN-13
    978-0789742797
  2. Edition
    1st
  3. Sticky notes
    On Kindle Scribe
  4. Publisher
    Que Publishing
  5. Publication date
    March 24, 2010
  6. Language
    English
  7. File size
    28439 KB
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Chris Bernard is a 17-year veteran of the design and technology industry. He is a passionate advocate for advancing the practice and discipline of innovation at the intersection of design, technology, and business.

Sara Summers is a 13-year veteran of the design industry. She has a personal mantra of design democracy–happy, healthy designers and developers working and playing together to create beautiful, inspirational products.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B003FJ64DK
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Que Publishing; 1st edition (March 24, 2010)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ March 24, 2010
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 28439 KB
  • Simultaneous device usage ‏ : ‎ Up to 5 simultaneous devices, per publisher limits
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 526 pages
  • Customer Reviews:
    3.3 3.3 out of 5 stars 17 ratings

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Chris Bernard

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Customer reviews

3.3 out of 5 stars
3.3 out of 5
17 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Derek B. Norton
4.0 out of 5 stars A very good book but sometimes frustrating working through the examples
Reviewed in the United States on April 21, 2011
Verified Purchase
I really wanted to give this book a 5 star rating because it really helped me become comfortable using SketchFlow. But, as other reviewers have mentioned it is sometimes difficult to follow the examples because the steps are unclear, or the resources are difficult to find. The addendum on their website fixes most of these issues but not all. I was still able to figure out all of the examples thanks to the finished projects that you can download from the books website, but the frustration encountered when trying to follow some of the examples is why I grudgingly gave this a 4 rather than a 5.

Also, I used Expression Studio 4 and I was very happy to discover that they provide all of the projects for the book for both version 3 and version 4 of expression studio.

Developer's perspective: I am a developer and have no formal education or experience with design. I got interested in SketchFlow because I needed a good way to prototype my projects and we do not have a designer where I work so the design of my projects also falls to me. The first 3 chapters are geared towards design in general and they talk alot about things that you would probably have learned if you went to a school of design. While I found these chapters to be very boring there was some useful information regarding how to go about designing a solution and the stages that a prototype will go through. Apart from that this book is completely accessible to developers who sometimes get thrust into design and prototyping and need to learn a good tool for that purpose.

If you need a book that focuses on SketchFlow do not be afraid to get this book. Though there are still a few places where the examples are hard to follow you can work through these, and the book does an excellent job of getting you up to speed using SketchFlow.
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John Raleigh
1.0 out of 5 stars One lousy star...Ouch.!
Reviewed in the United States on February 6, 2011
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I fully agree with the earlier reviewer who wrote that long and carefully worded essay. No need for me to try to improve on those many valid points, so I'll just be brief.

This book was a obvious hurry-up work with no real editing and loaded with outrageous typos. Even the errata had errors in the very first paragraph (addition instead of edition). When I read a technical book it is completely depreciated at the end. Couldn't get a nickel for it on EBay because of all the annotations and commentary and page-folding and paste-ins that I do. I have thus destroyed many, many books in my 30 years of programming but think of what I have learned. Without exaggeration, this one takes the booby prize as the worst I have ever handled.

In spite of that, I forged through it, doing all the exercises and adding my own trial ideas into them as I became more engaged in SketchFlow and Expression Blend. It is currently the only book out there on SketchFlow, but believe me if I had found another I would have tossed this one in the trash.

I was at Microsoft's Boston HQ a couple of nights ago at a DotNet Developers monthly meeting. Incredibly, a copy of this book was offered as a door prize. I promptly stood up and delivered my rant about the lack of quality and my difficulty with it. Don't authors know it's a viral world now and the word is clearly out on this mess. The publisher (Que) should be ashamed.
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Robert Smith
2.0 out of 5 stars Poor editing of a great book - What a shame
Reviewed in the United States on September 27, 2010
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I have to agree with the 1 star rating frustrations. Everything they write about is true:

File names that don't match the book, Missing images (sketches), Chapter projects that have been half finished already. Sometimes the steps are detailed and others they are very vague or missing. Spelling and grammar errors abound. I have wasted hours trying to figure something out because the book doesn't match the projects. The sketches are .png files which I am assuming have alpha channels because if you edit the image in MS Paint a save it, you loose the transparency info.

I am more than half way through the book and have had no problems with Expresion Blend 4 converting the files from Blend 3. Though one of the other reviewers pointed out that in the later projects they just won't convert. That would not surprise me.

UPDATE 9/30/10: Well I am into chapter 24 and though the projects still convert without problem, they won't build in Blend 4! The book is based on Silverlight 3 and the authors provide a .dll that is not compatible with Silverlight 4 AND, they do NOT provide the source code for that .dll! To get things to work you must dig into the XAML and delete the trigger that uses that .dll. But this is not the authors fault as the book is for Blend 3.

Also, it looks like the authors or the publisher have abandoned the web site as there have been no updates nor is there an errata anywhere. It would be nice to go to the web site and see a list of corrections or be able to download the missing files. But if you download what is on the web site, you still get all of these problems. Considering how long this book has been out, that is inexcusable.

With that said, if these problems where not an issue I would give the book a 5 star rating. With the exception of "Part I - The Theory Behind Sketching and Dynamic Prototyping" (boriiiing!), I like the way the book flows. A quick prototype introduces you to some basic SketchFlow capabilities. That is followed by more detailed and advanced capabilities all the time progressing through different stages of the Dynamic Prototyping process on through to the finished product. If you stick to it you will learn how to use SketchFlow from project concept to sketching and prototyping. In fact, this book demonstrates the power of SketchFlow very well and it is they joy of working with SketchFlow that saved this book from a 2 star rating and a lonely life on the shelf.

UPDATE 10/1/10: After struggling with the projects through chapter 23, I discovered that the books synchronization with the chapters source and projects just completely falls apart. A quick example: throughout the book a component screen used for navigation uses large customized rectangles. Suddenly, in ch. 27, the book shows them as Radio Buttons. Nowhere does the book discuss the change over to radio buttons. Furthermore, the ch. 27 project is missing more files than any other chapter. In fact, some of the missing files don't exist anywhere and are not recreatable so the solution will not build at all (in previous chapters, I was able to find most missing files in other chapters or recreate missing screens in Photoshop Elements).

I could go into more and more detail about all of the problems but I'll sum them up this way. All developers have experienced the scenario where you "get-latest" from your source code control system only to discover that someone has circumvented source code control and stepped over a ton of changes you had checked in: screwed up code, missing files, trashed project and solutions, etc. I feel that is what happened with this book. Two authors (or most likely an editor) merged all the chapters together and really screwed everything up. The sad part is it is very obvious that nobody ever sat down with the book and actually tried to work through the chapters with SketchFlow before the book went to press.

If you plan on working through the book, be prepared for some serious frustrations.
If you are only going to read it, then it has a lot of great information about SketchFlow.

Unfortunately, at this point in time, it is the only SketchFlow book in the sea.

I am recommending this book with the understanding that you will need to work around the previously mentioned problems.
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Michael L Davis
5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant and very holistic
Reviewed in the United States on January 6, 2011
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This book makes the case for dynamic prototyping (or sketchy prototyping as i like to call it) in a very holistic way. It gives the theoretical foundation, the practice patterns, instruction about making it a reality with Sketchflow and proves it by example. This makes model driven engineering come to life in a very practical way. It is the first step in leveraging industrial strength software development for the presentation layer in a practical way. Thank you Bernard and Summers for this excellent work. Now if we could just get Microsoft to put it back into the Professional version where it could reach the masses...
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Top reviews from other countries

Jennifers Daddy
4.0 out of 5 stars A good introduction
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 11, 2010
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As someone who uses Visual Studio everyday I needed something to get me into Sketchflow. Basically it's interface is completely different to VS! There are some great tutorials helping you to start off with the basics. Once you know where to actually find all the controls then you can use your existing knowledge (if any) of visual studio to construct your prototype and databind, etc. The only downside is that it's a bit too expensive and could've gone into slightly greater depth. Overall though, a nice introduction.
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