Sending messages to two places

Sending and receiving mismatched messages

You can send messages in different ways, but Protopie requires you to receive them in the matching way. A common (and easy) mistake is to send a message to a 'parent' while wanting to receive it from the current scene.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Why use Protopie?

There are many prototyping tools out there, so what makes Protopie special – how is it different?

Rough, Rapid, Right

Rough, Rapid, Right

Use Variables

How to inspect variables inside a component

Origami Studio, Figma and others

Working with Components

Viewing variables within Components