Ask HN: Review our Startup: Wireframing via Recognition (video) | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Review our Startup: Wireframing via Recognition (video)

pentotype.com

60 pointswkornewald38 comments

I've been doing UX for fifteen years, and I feel like I've tried every software solution, but nothing beats paper for concepting. My wireframing tools end up being used for documenting ideas, but they're terrible when you're generating ideas.

The problems in this video are exactly the problems I face.

The only place I had a problem with the solution was the idea that drawing on a tablet is the same as drawing on paper. For me, it's just not. My dream solution would let me draw on paper to begin with.

That said, the solution here still looks better than trying to develop ideas in Visio/Omnigraffle/Axure/InDesign/Keynote/whatever by orders of magnitude.

I'm very excited to try this out.

On our Bamboo tablet the feeling is a lot better than on a iPad for example. But we're optimistic about iPad and Android tablets getting closer to the paper feeling.

Your comment got me searching and I found this:

http://adonit.net/product/jot-touch/

Looks pretty darn close to feeling like paper. Pressure sensitivity doesn't matter for your app, but their other stylus options are fast and accurate too.

Any chance your app will work on my touchpad?

[EDIT] They also have JotStudio coming out. The app works with the pen and "overwrites the default finger offset, giving you 100% accuracy with the world's most accurate stylus."

They have an SDK so you can also support their pen. Sigh, I guess I need to buy an iPad3.

We really want to make pentotype offer an experience like on paper, so we also keep an eye on pens that improve the drawing accuracy.

Do you mean an HP Touch Pad? We don't have one, so we cannot say anything about that currently. It depends on its JavaScript and Canvas performance in the browser.

That looks awesome. For most of the video I couldn't help but think about how I could do the same thing on Google Docs, but your "Export" and "Simulate" features are obviously your money makers. And I would definitely pay for this product and use it a ton. Great work!

From a technical perspective, great choice sticking to browser technologies instead of native apps. I think it fits your product extremely well and I love seeing HTML5 technologies being pushed.

One piece of advice - remove the bit about not having your computer so you have to resort to paper and then transfer to software when traveling part. There is the same issue with your product as you've described it. So unless you're planning to add some easy transfer option, remove that bit.

Thanks, really happy to get your feedback.

So, if i understand correctly you don't need the collaboration part

About the transfer part: We often use our iPad on the go and we thought that it's more likely that you have your tablet on the go (compared to a notebook). However, it's always good to know if other people do have an iPad on the go too.

Thanks

No I definitely would use the collaboration part. Google Docs does collaboration very well. I was just saying that your product doesn't offer anything new or different without the transfer and simulate features.

Hi, I'm one of the founders of pentotype. We're creating a new kind of wireframing software and we'd really love to hear your feedback. We have been working on this for more than half a year now, doing some customer interviews and building a prototype. We're planning on launching an MVP in a few months, but we've gotten to a point where we'd really appreciate some broader feedback. Especially, we would like to know if you faced the problems shown in the video, if you see other problems and what you think about our solution.

Thanks Waldemar, Johannes and Thomas

Just this week we had an issue with a web application I am working on, where we had 3 forms to get started using our application, which we thought was ok. Then our commercial team complained that there were too many steps. We realized after they screen shotted each step that before the 3 forms there were 3 more pages to get to that point.

With the pentotype service we would of seen and addressed this issue months ago, instead of now when we are losing too many people in the funnel. Please let me know when its available for testing! @mark_ellul

Thanks, this is great real-life feedback. I'll let you know once we have a beta ready for testing.

I think this is a great idea! I have some ideas for iphone apps and this would be a perfect way to show developers what I had in mind.

Quick question: What software did you use to create the animations/drawings for the video?

Thanks for your feedback. The drawings were made by hand and the animations were done in Adobe After Effects.

I haven't found my ideal route from wireframing to prototyping. I'd be interested to give some feedback. I'm a designer by trade @ed_lea

Your concept sounds great!

Which part do you like the most? Do you need to communicate with customers? Or do you like the way the software let's you draw freely while still giving you benefits of software like copy&past?

speed. seems like I can try various options quickly. It would also be nice to snapshot your work so that you can go back an compare an old idea to the current idea.

I too find it irritating when other wireframing tools don't have that one thing I am looking for. The ability to easily create your own on the fly sounds interesting.

Handful of questions:

Drawing with a finger/pen on a tablet... will the lines auto-smooth? Is there a scripting language under new elements? Would I be able to combine elements and make a reusable gallery type super element?!

Will my clients have to install something to view my templates? Can I send them a URL or will I have to export an image?

Am I asking too many questions?

We love questions. :)

Lines will be smoothed, similar to how the Bamboo iPad app does it. Our prototype already does that. Does this answer your question?

You'll be able to create custom (even grouped) widgets and store them for easy access (e.g. if they're complicated to draw every time). We also plan to make pentotype even recognize your custom elements.

Clients won't need to install anything because pentotype is web-based. They just can point their browser at a URL and interact with the wireframe and leave comments.

Yes, thank you, when and how much?

Wow. :) We're working as fast as we can. In a few months we want to release an MVP. The pricing will be based on monthly subscriptions, but we haven't decided on a pricing scheme, yet.

you almost lost me 30-40 seconds into it because i thought - oh this is just another wireframing app. glad i stayed to the end! nice work guys

I've been designing software for 20 years, reviewed over a dozen wireframing tools, and I still use Photoshop. But Photoshop sucks for low fidelity comps and creating interaction guides.

For the low fidelity comps, I bought myself a LiveScripe echopen so I could draw out things and import them for manipulation, instead of throwing out paper, etc, but I haven't explored it to its full potential yet. The benefits are that I can easily import and manipulate drawings and that I can record audio as I draw, and then click on a drawing to hear what I (or clients) said at the moment I drew what I clicked on. Very helpful for remembering all the ideas and flow when I get to a computer.

Your solution looks fantastic for low fidelity. It would be super cool if I could control it with that pen like this: http://www.livescribe.com/store/20070723002/paper-tablet/p-4...

The next step is when I start replacing low fidelity with medium fidelity photoshop mockups. Once approved/done, it goes to real graphic artists and coders. It would be great if I can easily copy selections of a photoshop comp over specific parts of drawings to move it's fidelity up the ladder piece by piece and page by page as components and pages are done, and get feedback on it as I go. With an easy way to keep track of what has been updated recently or commented on and by who, and a way to mark off comments that are addressed, and to know who has seen what and if they approve or not with comments.

The other thing I wonder about is how you organize things. I'm currently designing a giant app for all platforms. The specs are huge and it has lots of subtle animation state changes etc that might be challenging to map out, where clicking makes just one bit of the page do something, not going to a whole page. (Like opening a menu or flipping a card to see what's on the back.) It would be nice if it could somehow deal with that and deal with reusing sections on several mockups for different media. I'd want to switch between the same page (if it exists) for tablet, phone, and PC. And when I upgrade the fidelity of an elment on one mockup, it would replace it everywhere else it is used.

So, that's my initial thoughts on what my dream wireframing tool would be.

Generally love what you are doing and want in immediately to see if it speeds up things for me! :-)

Thank you, also for the note about the LiveScripe echopen. How essential is it for you to have live audio recordings?

We'd like to start with screen flows, but we want to support more stateful element changes in future releases, too. Would you like to do a Skype call with us in the next few weeks and talk a little bit more about your workflow?

The audio recordings are a god send. I sleep with that notebook and take it everywhere. I don't lose any ideas because of it.

Yes, we can do a skype call. I'll contact you.

Well guys it all looks very nice. I'm just afraid you misjudge the situation. If I'm already working with electronic device why should I draw anything, not just drag&drop UI elements? It seems to be waste of my time.

Merits of paper are huge and can't be overvalued.

- Paper has no limits, because it has extremely simple user interface. No predefined style, rules and guidelines. No predefined interaction. - Paper is vastly collaborative - easy to share, easy to pin on the wall and discuss with team mates. - Paper doesn't bond you. You can always easily throw away what you have designed in 5 minutes. You don't need to focus on details! - Paper teaches designers that what they have in mind matters, not tools

Your tool doesn't address those advantages of paper properly.

Adobe created similar app and doesn't achieve much.

Besides, problem with conversion from paper into digital wireframes is already resolved. UXPin notepads and UXPin App are quite popular in the UX world.

Check out the video: http://youtu.be/-7VitOBVfCE

You can start your design process on paper by sticking UI elements on paper to the notepad, take a picture of it, send it to the app and it will be auto-converted.

So while your website looks nice and the video is great, your conception seems to miss the point.

Sorry about that. I wish you all the best.

We've learned about the benefits of UXPin from our customer interviews. However, we've also learned a lot about the disadvantages of UXPin and paper in general.

We agree with you that paper has a lot of advantages. That's why pentotype aims to keep all the benefits of paper. At the same time we'll enrich the paper experience with the interactivity of software.

Thank you for sharing your thoughts. We'll take them into account to make pentotype even better. ;)

All right!:) Cheers for your reply.

I don't believe UX designers will leave paper. We are not using paper now because we have bad software, we are actually using paper because we sometimes want to keep ourselves away of computers (tablets counts as well).

90% of UX designers use paper (according to research by Todd Zaki Warfel).

Adobe learnt that recently. They did app very similar to yours and didn't succeed much. Personally don't know single UX designer using it. And they put a lot of money into marketing.

http://www.adobe.com/products/proto.html

It looks shiny and cool, but it's useless in UX design process.

Synchronized Collaboration Environment is also a topic attracting academic interest. There were desktop white boards GUI that are similar to this, but I think porting it onto tablet and the recognition part is a game-changer. Question: will the backend be open source?

Looks very nice indeed. I'm a big fan of early testing on wireframes rather anything higher fidelity.

I hope you include an android tablet version rather than just ipad!

As pentotype is a web app, it only requires a browser. In principle, it will work on all high performance tablets, no matter which OS.

I had a different sense of "recognition" going in than what was portrayed in the video.

What exactly did you mean by "a different sense of recognition"?

in this context it would involve some kind of media-transformation, say from paper to mockup via webcam.

I interpretted the recognition to be of the actual wireframes itself, which allows for the user experience at the wireframe stage. Is that correct?

You interpretted it correctly. The actual wireframes itself are recognized on-line so you can directly move elements around or test your wireframe.

Me too. I was really hoping for an app that could take a scan of a handwritten diagram / mockup, and "recognize" the shapes, converting them into objects that could be manipulated (resized, removed, repositioned etc) through the app.

I am waiting for this app as well. With AR-style overlay of the already placed wireframes over the camera picture, making positioning/sizing very easy: just move your tablet, and press the shutter once the new stuff is in the right place. lets start this with OpenCV on Android.

Looks interesting, would be great to see screenshots/video of the actual product.

We've already build a prototype. Now we would like to know which part of pentotype is needed most. How would it be useful for you?

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