Keynote as a prototyping tool?

Is anyone using Keynote as a prototyping tool?

I was at a conference last week and Joel Beukelman from Netflix showed how they prototype with Keynote. My interest is piqued, but as I’m not on Apple, I’ll have to invest in hardware to use it. What he showed seemed pretty robust, action, motion, etc.

he also mentioned http://keynotopia.com/ as a starting point.

Curious to hear opinions.

Looks neat. I consider Keynote as similar to PowerPoint but with less options and better usability, but never considered either for prototyping. Will give it a shot. Thanks.

Looks like there are powerpoint templates available from that site too if you’re on the PC side. Pretty slick resource if you’re sticking within the standard templates.

Explains why Netflix UI blows.

Ha! Exactly…

Explain why Netflix UI blows. Please.

To me it feels like the brief was:

Make a digital Blockbuster Video store.

(Note I’m basing my opinion on the iPad app and Roku player app, which is the worst of all UI’s)

Back on topic, yes, Keynote and Powerpoint are often used as quick prototyping tools.

yow. I didn’t expect netflix commentary… but maybe there is something we can mine here… If you think that prototyping in keynote (vs some other tool) is somehow indicative of a diminished user experience in the product, could you explain a little more? I’m not just talking about netflix in general. What does keynote NOT do well that would make it a lesser tool than anything else?

I’m not defending keynote or netflix… but what I am interested in are the opinions of people who work in industry. If I’m going to present something to a client and there is an industry trend indicating that they are going to shit on it just because of the tool, then that’s valuable knowledge. Opinions don’t always have to be rational, but there is usually some kind of reasoning behind them.

Since we don’t have an actual example here, check out this video where the guy shows an iPhone demo (sadly, not the best type of app for a use demo) and how he made it. How to create an iPhone app prototype in 13 minutes using Apple Keynote [Video Tutorial] | Amir Khella

I hate bringing up an old thread, but I’ve been searching for a quick / dirty prototype tool, and was wondering if there’s been any new software developed recently for this purpose? I’ve looked at balsamiq but I would like to create something like this: http://www.android.com/new/videos/phone_final.webm
I could do this fairly quickly on AfterEffects, but there’s got to be a more specialized tool. (If not, I’m going to develop it! Heh)

Because it’s a PITA to find anything that has not been suggested for me by an algorithm based on things I watched in the past.
Because it’s a PITA to read the description of movies having to “enter” the page, load it, read it, go back, see the list rearranged.
At the time of my previous comment there was no option of saving things to a watch list, basically having to search every single time I wanted to see an episode of some series not on the front page. I’m not sure what it’s like now though.
Categories and subcategories get switched around. The rating system is not thought through enough.
Finding settings for subtitles is damn near impossible on Apple TV (while playing).

There are many more irritation points, and I don’t think it was ALL because of keynote. But I imagine the lack of smarter layered interaction is caused by that limitation, always having to move to the “next slide”. Imagine someone designing a car in SketchUp because it’s a “quick prototyping tool”. That’s how Netflix UI feels for me.

That’s a good point - I can see how a sequential slide-by-slide prototyping effort would result in that UI. Most of my use of NF is via Apple TV which has a pretty limited palette of potential actions - essentially the old iPod paradigm of in-out-select - and a four-way toggle instead of something that can move freely and hover. Thanks for the feedback.