  Prototyping is one of the core activities of User-Centered Design (UCD)
processes and an integral component of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI)
research. For many years, prototyping was synonym of paper-based mockups and
only more recently we can say that dedicated tools for supporting prototyping
activities really reach the market. In this paper, we propose to analyze the
evolution of prototyping tools for supporting the development process of
interactive systems. For that, this paper presents a review of the literature.
We analyze the tools proposed by academic community as a proof of concepts
and/or support to research activities. Moreover, we also analyze prototyping
tools that are available in the market. We report our observation in terms of
features that appear over time and constitute milestones for understating the
evolution of concerns related to the development and use of prototyping tools.
This survey covers publications published since 1988 in some of the main HCI
conferences and 118 commercial tools available on the web. The results enable a
brief comparison of characteristics present in both academic and commercial
tools, how they have evolved, and what are the gaps that can provide insights
for future research and development.
