PART 1: TURNING EXCEL INTO A PROTOTYPING TOOL Figure 1.8. Screen from a prototype of a Windows application. Prototype courtesy of Dirk-Jan Hoets. been easier. Applying company colors and graphics can also be automated, allow- ing you to leverage the work of professional designers in your company to achieve professional-looking results. No Special Skills Required Prototyping in Excel requires only the use of basic desktop and Excel functionality. You can create forms, tabs, and tables using simple cell formatting. You can create 3-D borders for buttons or input fields simply by using cell borders. Field length can be changed via drag and drop or copy and paste. The only mental shift required is to stop thinking of the Excel grid as a spreadsheet, instead thinking of it as a gra- phics layout grid. Readily Available If you want your prototyping process to empower your software makers, you need a tool that everyone can use. Excel is a readily available tool; it is frequently included on business computers. For the few of you who don't have Excel, there are alternatives such as OpenOffice, available for free, that put 90 percent of the techniques from this book to use, although some commands will differ. 14 Introduction