With the delivery of Expression Blend 3 Preview, Microsoft mentioned SketchFlow, described by Bruce Kyle, an architect evangelist for Microsoft in the Developer & Platform Evangelism team, as “a rapid prototyping capability that makes it easy to communicate design intent to stakeholders.” SketchFlow is a tool set up to add on to Expression Blend 3 and to streamline the early stages or project design by allowing developers to literally sketch out their ideas. S. Somasegar, senior vice president, Developer Division, emphasized that SketchFlow was focused on the concept behind a certain project rather than on its visual identity and that, as such, the tool offered “sketch-styled” controls. However, even if only sketches, the prototypes do not suffer from the perspective of functionality, and all ideas can be seamlessly “upgraded” to high-fidelity controls when devs choose to do so.

“SketchFlow prototypes are quick and informal, enabling designers to easily explore a variety of ideas. You can run and explore prototypes from the first rough sketch on. When you are ready to develop further, you can convert a prototype into a real application in Expression Blend or Visual Studio,” Somasegar added. “When you start working on a new prototype project for either WPF or Silverlight, you’ll see the panels, control toolbox, and artboard that you are likely accustomed to in Expression Blend. You can use the existing set of controls found in Expression Blend 3 or your own custom controls.”

The tool comes to the table with the SketchFlow Player, permitting developers to easily share and showcase their concepts. Via the player, prototypes can not only be viewed as animations, but can also be navigated and even allow for UI states to be interchanged with ease, and with minimal cost and effort when it comes to the actual development of the user interface.

“SketchFlow leverages features of Expression Blend 3 to let you make your prototypes come alive. Add interactivity without code using Behaviors, prototype your data-driven UI with sample data, and import content from Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator,” Somasegar added.

Expression Blend 3 Preview is available for download here.

Silverlight 3 Beta 3 is available for download here.