Marvel - Design Apps on Your Phone
An easy way to bring apps to semi-life
Free Developer Marvel Prototyping, marvelapp.com Platform Universal Requirements iOS 9 or later
Lots of people have had a moment when they’re suddenly struck by that One Great App Idea – maybe you have too! But unless you have prosumer or professional tools, your best shot at articulating that idea to someone is usually a bar napkin or ineffectual hand gestures. Fortunately, there’s Marvel (nothing to do with comic books), part of a relatively new, niche wave of apps that aim to bring the art of the “app mockup” to the rest of us.
Marvel is a purpose-built diagramming app with a few clever perks that help bring your app ideas to interactive semi-life. You have simple tools to draw shapes, add text and photos, and even bring in a handful of stock icons and photography to spice things up.
The key feature is the ability to link app screens to buttons, allowing your audience (or potential investors) to tap around as if it’s a real app.
If you could use some app design inspiration, Marvel provides a wealth of creative sparks with an in-app gallery. Since Marvel is a hosted service, it’s easy to share your app mockups with others, complete with multiple screens and any interactivity you add.
Marvel does a decent job, but we find the app lacking a few key tools and features that seem obvious and necessary. For example, it’s difficult to create a number of typical interface elements to use across many or all screens, such as the navigation “tab bar” along the bottom of many apps such as Safari, Tweetbot, and Apple’s own Phone app.
A little planning can help, though – if you create those template items in your first screen, then duplicate that screen as the basis for all others in your project, it’s a functional workaround. Still, workarounds shouldn’t really be necessary for a tool that designed to speed up the prototyping process. But we can’t be too hard on it considering Marvel is one hundred percent free. It beats a napkin, anyway.
the bottom line. Lacks a few obvious features, but it’s a good, free way to start mocking-up apps.