Prototyping iPhone apps on paper with POP

by scottmagdalein • 14 years ago

309 96 14 years ago

kairichard• 14 years ago

i want this for OSX

flexterra• 14 years ago

I do something similar on OSX with OmniGraffle. You can generate an HTML output that it's basically an image with links to other pages. It even works on PDFs.

Anywho, I like this for mobile

chrishaum2• 14 years ago

You can also do it in Keynote. Just create hyperlinks between slides (which you can do with any shape, via the Inspector). Then export the presentation as a PDF, and the clickable image hyperlinks will be preserved in the PDF file. Then it's also very convenient for sharing with designers/developers/investors, etc.

chrishaum2• 14 years ago

Here's a really goofy and poorly-thought-out example as a proof of concept. It took about 10 minutes to make. http://goo.gl/AemLD (best viewed in Preview in single-page mode)

wolfhumble• 14 years ago

Templates via http://keynotopia.com/ would do something like that.

aviswanathan2• 14 years ago

Very elegant and powerful solution to a pretty common problem. Does anyone know if something like this exists for web apps?

Wraecca7• 14 years ago

invision?

aviswanathan2• 14 years ago

Yea, but it can get pricey pretty quickly

netvarun• 14 years ago

We use Balsamiq and are pretty happy with it.

ryc• 14 years ago

so simple--great idea.

This + photoshop mock-ups ftw?

jh32• 14 years ago

- Export screen mockups from Photoshop

- Save images to Dropbox

- Open images in Dropbox app on your iPhone/iPad

- Save images to Photo Library

- Open images in POP

- Win!

dreamerslab13• 14 years ago

We are thinking if it worth to add a sync with dropbox feature.

danielpal• 14 years ago

Thanks!!! This is beyond awesome.

drcongo• 14 years ago

Very nice.

ninetax2• 14 years ago

Woah, that is awesome! This is a pretty ingenious idea. Literally anyone who can sketch an idea, can prototype an app, and unlike other prototyping tools, there are no pre-built pieces to choose from, so the sky's the limit.

emilepetrone• 14 years ago

I was expecting to pay $5 for this...

josefresco• 14 years ago

This concept is novel because it replaces the need to "design" the app in a separate piece of software (and learn yet another UI). Although I like Balsamiq sometimes sketching is quicker, and more convenient. I think ideally having both options would be good as sometimes the urge to sketch an idea arises, but normally I would use the software.

Also

Idea: They should sell app mockup paper/pads as a side business.

jakek• 14 years ago

Check out: UI Stencils http://www.uistencils.com

Can't wait to try POP and UI Stencils together.

aolczak• 14 years ago

Beware if you like sketching with pens only and use these stencils. Will screw up your pen tip.

jjcm• 14 years ago

I've used these stencils before. I would not recommend them. The icon stencils are cut out at the exact size of the icons, but when you're using a stencil you often have to make the stencil larger than the icon you're trying to draw. The result of tracing them often looks like you did a -2px stroke on whatever icon you're illustrating. Also for finer detailed icons, you often can't fit a pencil into the groove of the stencil, even with the provided pencil that comes with it. The lead of the pencil is thicker than the groove in the stencil. The edges of the stencil are often quite sharp as well, and will cut the tips off of felt pens (and create grooves in pencil lead which will cause it to break). Honestly the only thing I now use my stencil for is as a dull knife to open packages (you can easily cut paper, foam, cardboard, or tape with the sides of these things, they aren't sanded down at all).

scottmagdalein2• 14 years ago

Agree on the idea. Pads and colored pencils that allow for more intricate interactions when recognized by the app.

AmVess• 14 years ago

Recursive skeuomorphism.

I love it.

thom• 14 years ago

Googling implies this is coming to the web:

http://jiwo.in/pop-web/plans.html

kungpoo• 14 years ago

Yep, found this too http://popapp.in/w#!/projects/509f4907f24f5ec734000001/previ...

jcoder2• 14 years ago

This is great!

Why is it free?

UPDATE Ah: http://jiwo.in/pop-web/plans.html

leesk• 14 years ago

http://popapp.in/plans

jcoder2• 14 years ago

Ah, paid plans for the mobile version, too. I wonder why that isn't linked on the home page.

owenfi• 14 years ago

The plans on these pages are different, btw. The first one indicates a 'private' option, but that all looks cleaned up in the parent link.

rytis2• 14 years ago

"Why is it free?"

Would that be a bad thing? Why everything has to be paid for?

vegashacker• 14 years ago

Potentially, yes. You want products you like to have a business model so that they are kept alive.

TonyQ• 14 years ago

Because those engineer is doing their job and we need to let them have more power to do such a wonderful stuff.

MaxGabriel• 14 years ago

The pricing seems way too low. $30 dollars a month for studios is pocket change to a 30+ person team

huhtenberg• 14 years ago

Uhm... does this mean the app cannot work offline?

scrumper• 14 years ago

Well done, this is great.

So much more sense to use an existing layer on the tech stack (paper & pencil) rather than inventing yet another way of putting black lines on a white background.

Nothing to stop you sketching out your menus (and other repeating fragments) on smaller pieces of paper and collaging them together either.

sketchbound• 14 years ago

This is great!

Void_• 14 years ago

My whole visit on this website I spent looking for the resulting prototype I could play with. If the product of your app is something interactive, why not show it off?

frankacter• 14 years ago

Found this uncovers a few samples to play around with, not sure if intentional or not.

https://www.google.com/#hl=en&q=site:popapp.in+preview&#...

dreamerslab13• 14 years ago

We plan to build a dribbble like site but with interactive prototypes (only those who want to be seen)

sheraz• 14 years ago

This reminds me of codiqa [1], a web app for creating skeleton mobile web apps. I use it all the time to mockup basic workflows like this.

disclaimer - I am a customer of codiqa.

[1] http://codiqa.com

levymetal• 14 years ago

Genius. And it's not often I say that.

jh32• 14 years ago

Be sure to click the Plans button in the toolbar. You can get 5 to 20 free projects.

Smirnoff2• 14 years ago

Just got 20 extra projects. How will the new pricing rollout affect this?

dreamerslab13• 14 years ago

It's only for early birds. Once the service is worth you paying the give away page will be gone.

dreamerslab13• 14 years ago

You will still have 22 projects :)

dreamerslab13• 14 years ago

Someone emailed us and said she's only got 6 give away projects while her friend's got 17. She said it's so unfair and she will never pay for this...

superbeefy• 14 years ago

Great App! Just tried it with UI Stencils and it really helps with testing of usability with an actual device.

Sadly there seems to be a bug with image alignment. Even if I get it right in cropping tool it looks like its shifting all images up and to the right by that looks like 10 to 15px. Other than that fantastic.

Wraecca7• 14 years ago

Hi this is Wraecca from the POP team, I'm sorry about the bug, we'll fix it as soon as possible. Thanks for reporting!

iota• 14 years ago

Can't wait to try this out. I've done something similar for other UX designers by taking flat screenshots and overlaying an image map with clickable areas. Instant "high fidelity" prototype!

justjimmy• 14 years ago

Idea suggestion:

Freely distribute a PDF that has unique border patterns so when people use/print it out and use that paper, and proceed to take a photo, the program can detect the borders and auto zoom in/out so you end up with a nicely fitted screen shot on the phone. Then users never worry about getting the heigh/width ratio right or bother with the cropping step. And you get to plaster your branding all over the desk of those that uses it :)

dreamerslab13• 14 years ago

We are working on this. This feature will probably come with a special made notebook.

modarts• 14 years ago

Here's an off the wall idea that i'm not sure is even technically feasible, but:

How about a way to "OCR" the drawn interface in a way that the software is able to parse the elements out (buttons, toolbars, swatches, etc.) maybe using the iOS HIG and other contextual clues. The output would be a xib file, ready to iterate on.

dreamerslab13• 14 years ago

That's a great idea but it's technically too hard for us :(

k4st• 14 years ago

Idea suggestion 1: Shape detection. Presumably this is already present given that it looks for the borders of the viewscreen. It would be really great if it could detect potential buttons in the app, and auto-select them to improve the speed of the workflow.

Idea Suggestion 2: Color coding. Use a highlighter to color in buttons in some color. Your app would automatically recognize things of that color as buttons, and potentially erase the color in the "finished" prototypes.

creativename• 14 years ago

A comment about suggestion 1: The creators may have prior computer vision experience, but as someone who tried to learn this from scratch and perform handwritten shape detection I can say that it's a messy place to work. If it's not their core competency, it can get tricky with all the different shapes and problems that may arise with said shapes. Then again, I didn't have machine-learning experience which may be the way to go.

That would definitely be cool, though. You could basically edit what you literally just drew if you could properly detect the shapes and how they were nested within each other.

dreamerslab13• 14 years ago

It's really hard to do detection with hand drawing. We might make special stickers for common UI elements (botton, tab bar ...). The color coding suggestion is great, thanks!

scottmagdalein2• 14 years ago

Usability suggestion: Don't force me to create an account BEFORE I receive any value from your app. Creating an account is a pain. It's not clear why I need an account. It most definitely benefits you, even if you think it's better for me in the long run.

Hold the account-setup step until I've created my first project and want to do something with it. That's when I'll be able to easily understand why I need an account.

dreamerslab13• 14 years ago

Sorry about that, we will release a standalone version that does not need to pay monthly fee nor singup before using.

ninetax2• 14 years ago

One thing that keeps happening: when I take a picture and finish cropping the app severely cuts off the right size of the picture. Any chance for a fix?

Wraecca7• 14 years ago

Sorry for the bug, we'll fix it soon! Thank you :)

matthuggins• 14 years ago

Didn't try it out (I'm an Android user), but nice idea. I forwarded it along to some old colleagues who are into Lean Startup, as this seems like a useful tool.

Unrelated to the app itself, but the website, the use of the word "feedbacks" seems pretty weird. (Are you a non-native English speaker?)

  Sharing & Feedbacks
  Share your prototype with colleagues and friends. They
  can try out and comment on your prototype on their
  iPhone, iPad or in web browsers. You’d be surprised
  how valuable their feedbacks are.

I would recommend using the word "feedback" instead. e.g.:

  Sharing & Feedback
  Share your prototype with colleagues and friends. They
  can try out and comment on your prototype on their
  iPhone, iPad or in web browsers. You’d be surprised
  how valuable their feedback is.

Wraecca7• 14 years ago

You're right, we're not native English speaker. Thank you for correcting :)

xauronx• 14 years ago

Honestly, it shows in a few places. I think you have a hell of a product. It might be worth it to pay someone $50 to proof read it. (or even a fellow HN'er who will do it for a pro account)

earless1• 14 years ago

I know this is probably a stupid question, but what are you using for the videos on the site. I like they way they are just in their without controls or anything.

twelve452• 14 years ago

It's the HTML5 <video> tag.

eps2• 14 years ago

Got

  name Unexcept error custom code
                 2

when creating an account.

On a more general note - what a superb idea, completely ruined by a desire to wrangle it into a recurrent revenue model. This should be a standalone paid app with an optional paid service for team collaboration and online backups. But it must work out of the box with no b/s accounts and no Internet connection. Simply because it doesn't need either.

Wraecca7• 14 years ago

Sorry for the bug! We're considering to release a offline version which don't need to create an account. Thanks for feedback!

eps2• 14 years ago

Thanks for the reply. There is a lot of curious impulsive devs and designers who wouldn't think twice about spending a fiver on a cool new app, if only to test it. So please do consider an offline version.

indiecore• 14 years ago

Is app prototyping the new loyalty coupons? Is this what everyone is working on for winter?

rick711003• 14 years ago

OMG! This app is app dev company's good product ! I LOVE IT

flyworldhan• 14 years ago

its amazing !

anenthg• 14 years ago

I have used Nokia's Flowella http://www.developer.nokia.com/Resources/Tools_and_downloads...

But, this is much more cooler as it is further simplifies the process. Is an Android version in the works?

dreamerslab13• 14 years ago

We plan to open apis for 3rd party Android client.

pirrer• 14 years ago

great work !

jinhow• 14 years ago

brilliant idea

hamey• 14 years ago

This is awesome. Suits my design process and I've often wondered why no one has done it before. Great work!

TheFuture2• 14 years ago

"* Due to App Store's restrictions, only Freelancer is available for in app purchase"

Anyone know why that is?

dreamerslab13• 14 years ago

We haven't figured that out. Because we will be a subscription service, we are not sure if having muli plans are allowed in IAP. Anyone has experience before?

kolinko• 14 years ago

Why wouldn't it be? I didn't find such a thing in the guidelines, and it's quite common in other areas (e.g. 5 gold coins cost you $.99, but 50 gold coins in a game $3.99).

TheFuture2• 14 years ago

You can have multiple prices of subscription IAP. You just can't do an auto-renew IAP subscription. They only seem to allow magazines to do that.

There is a video from WWDC 2012 where they go through each kind of IAP. Worth watching for what you want to do.

https://developer.apple.com/videos/wwdc/2012/?id=308

tharris0101• 14 years ago

Okay, I'll admit that I sort of rolled my eyes at the top of the overview but by the end I was totally searching the app store for this app. What a novel and great idea.

IceyEC• 14 years ago

Quick design note: on your web page you need to track active page in your navigation: currently Overview is always active (different color link)

dreamerslab13• 14 years ago

Cool, thanks!

Kulbir• 14 years ago

POP: This iPhone app is every designer's missing puzzle piece for prototyping on paper.

muescha• 14 years ago

Just stopped and deleted after the sign-in splash screen!

Why i need to create a account BEFORE i use it? I dont like to share my project! I dont need to push it to public!

Its a phishing app for idea grabbing?

Wraecca7• 14 years ago

Sorry, we found the problem and we're working on it now. Thanks for feedback :)

antonyme• 14 years ago

I love this idea very much - mainly because I had virtually the same idea maybe 5 years ago. I was frustrated with existing prototyping/design systems and getting bogged down in details and pixels instead of thinking about the 'big picture' and the workflow (which IMHO is far more important, especially at the early stage).

I had a manual process whereby I would draw all my prototype UIs in pencil on large sheets of paper, then use an A3 scanner to import them into a slideshow. The cumbersome part was creating hot-clickable areas to jump between screens. But it worked a treat, and enabled very fast turnaround of ideas.

I think workflow (or UX if you like) does not get enough attention in the early design phases, where people seem to like producing pixel-perfect mockups in Photoshop. The problem with this is that it takes you a very long way down a particular path, when you don't even know for sure if that is the correct way to go.

Photoshop mockups are time-consuming and expensive to make compared to rough sketching on paper. This app looks like a great solution in this space.

Prototyping iPhone apps on paper with POP

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