I should start by saying I am by no means a Keynote ‘pro’ compared with many of our web team who could use it in their sleep. In fact, when I first started working at ESPI last July, I was very surprised to find out that designers were using Keynote for laying out presentations. My surprise turned to alarm when I found out that they were also using it as a design tool to build UI designs for websites and apps. It turns out that I was absolutely wrong. Keynote is an incredibly powerful design tool. Less then one year later, I now rarely (if ever) use InDesign to layout presentations, and I have started using Keynote almost exclusively for any web layouts I do. And not just UX wireframes, but full UI designs. On a recent project, I also used it for poster mock ups, banner designs and a bunch of other formats.

My slides are not designed for people who didn’t see the talk in person. They’re designed to support my words, not some online audience. What’s more, many commented that they found the design of the slides to be noteworthy. I’m expressly not a designer.

The atomic method requires you to create a slide for each sentence. For a five minute talk, that's 50 slides.

Each slide must have either a single word, a single image or a single idea.

You’re smart, so you probably already know about the “New from Clipboard” feature of Mac OS X Preview. Exactly: if you copy an image to your clipboard from any source, open Preview, click File -> New from Clipboard, Preview will create a new image using the contents of your clipboard. That’s cool.

These templates enable you to put together interactive product wireframes quickly, and add hyperlinks to enable interactivity without writing code. Once you’re done with your wireframes, you can upgrade them using the mega prototyping bundle, and give your prototypes a more polished look and feel.

Every day, we all get lots of good ideas. Most of us, unfortunately, don’t act on these ideas. We create high barriers to entry by imagining how much resources it requires, and how much we need to learn, in order to see it in action. If you know how to put together a prototype of your idea within one hour of getting it, your chances of moving forward are much higher than the ones who will sit down to do market research, write business plans, and hunt for investors. In fact, and this is based on personal experience, your chances of winning a client or receiving investment for your idea are much higher when you can express your ideas with a prototype that you can show along with your presentation. By using a simple, cheap and productive tool like Apple Keynote, you shrink the time required to create an interactive prototype to a matter of hours. And by using ready made prototyping assets, you even shrink that time to less than an hour.

Lately, Apple Keynote has been gaining popularity among designers as a wireframing and prototyping tool. Features like multiple slide masters, styles, grouping, animation and hyperlinks make it ideal for crafting interactive prototypes and UI narratives. Today’s freebie, Keynotopia, is a free set of interface elements for Keynote that makes it possible for anyone to create these prototypes in minutes. All elements are hand-crafted in Apple Keynote, and organized in nested groups for easier manipulation and customization. The templates can be used in Keynote 09 and 08 and are designed by Amir Khella.

Last month I compiled an overview of why software designers were turning to Apple's presentation software, Keynote, to design application interfaces. Several of you asked for more so... here's additional reasons to design in Keynote and lots of tips for getting the most out of it.

Recently, an increasing number of designers (myself included) are turning to Apple's presentation making software, Keynote, to design and prototype software applications. Here's a few reasons why and some tips learned along the way.

Once you use Apple’s Keynote for wireframing, you’ll roundhouse kick your other wireframe tools in the face.