Balsamiq Mockups (Desktop) is the best GUI design tool ever!

As the requirements gatherer/designer/lead coder, my GUI designs serve two purposes: 1) To brainstorm and build ideas with the user community; 2) To communicate to the other developers the very ideas agreed upon by the user community.

In the past, the only two tools I've ever had any comfort with were whiteboards and Power Point. Whiteboards make it super easy to draw and change ideas, but they look pretty poor and they aren't very durable or portable. (I'd taken to keeping a digital camera in my desk.) Power Point can make a mock-up look spot-on, but it takes forever to do, and it can't always be coded exactly like the "picture." (We've joked about the wonders we've accomplished in the "Power Point Operating System.")

Enter Balsamiq Mockups. It's arguably easier to use than a whiteboard. (Try creating a tab panel on a whiteboard in as few seconds as you can do it in Mockups!). It creates durable, editable mock-ups. (Try editing that digital picture you took of the whiteboard.) And with the PNG export, it offers terrific portability.

Before, I was doing far too little GUI "prototyping" because either the results weren't reusable or the effort took to long; now I fear I may be doing too much because it's just that much fun.