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Comment by wkornewald | Hacker News Reader

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

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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.

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.

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.

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

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