Sending and receiving mismatched messages

Sending messages to two places

Whilst it is important to be careful in sending messages to the right places, it is also very powerful to send a message to two different places at the same time (or maybe with a small delay).

Check if Protopie Connect is present

If you are building a prototype that depends upon Protopie Connect then it is a good idea to start by checking if Connect is actually present.

Good Prototyping Practice

IDEO's 3R prototyping principles from the late 1990s still apply - "Right, Rough, Rapid" but in the UX and UI space they are easily misunderstood.

Use Components

It will often seem as though it will be faster to use individual elements than to use components, but in the end the time saving almost always goes the other way.

Use Variables

Variables are very powerful simplifying tool and they do not seem to have any impact on Protopie's performance.

Receive and Assign hazard

Receiving a message, and then assigning a value and then writing a conditional based on that value is that something that is quite a normal, conceptual pattern – but in Protopie it will often not work as expected. This is because responses to Protopie triggers all happen simultaneously and not in the order written.

Check if your other pie is present

When building a connected system it can be valuable to know if the other pies are loaded into Connect or not – for examples so you don't get stuck waiting for a message that will never be sent.

The wrong variable type

This pitfall is not a big deal, but it can waste you time as you try to track down why your variable seems to have the wrong value (or no value). It can also bite you in a formula where your variable is of the wrong type for the formula.

Receive and Assign hazard

Check if Protopie Connect is present

Origami Studio, Figma and others

Rough, Rapid, Right

Use Variables

Keep trigger and response names visible