Design Driven Development

I have always liked the idea of software development that is driven by the UI design. I am pretty confident that developing the UI first results in a stronger end result. Unfortunately I can quickly mock-up code, but I don’t have any tools to quickly mock-up designs.

Does anyone know of any WYSIWYG tools for the Mac that allow you to create quick and dirty screens? I have GoLive, but it is very clunky. I am pretty good with Dreamweaver (I even used to teach classes on it), but I don’t have a copy. I don’t really need a full-featured WYSIWYG since I prefer to hand-code that actual HTML in the end. It is just that hand-coding HTML takes too long for Design Driven Development.

You may remember that last week I was pontificating about the benefits of “Test Driven Development”. You might be wondering “well, which is it? Test Driven or Design Driven?” The answer is of course both. The designs are about concepts whereas the tests are about functionality. When working on the concepts then you design first. When working on the functionality then you test first. When you are doing everything yourself then I think you mock design first, write tests second, and write code to pass the tests last. After that you repeat the process for revision cycles (design, test, code).

Do any of the developers out there have a different preferred method?