Evaluation of prototyping tools based on categories and parameters

The software development industry is mainly composed of micro and small businesses that usually have limited economic resources. This makes them difficult to acquire tools supporting the software development process. The present study is aimed to identify and evaluate tools, at low or no licensing cost, which can be used in businesses or university courses. The target tools must be easy to use and learn to facilitate their adoption in an academic context and, and by doing so, to translate their use into the business environment. This article presents a framework, based on categories and parameters, for the evaluation of prototyping tools which can be applied to other contexts or other tools.