Prototyping User(s) Experiences

Prototyping is a key step in any design process, but it tends to be focused on the things that can be built (the architecture, the components, the user interface) but much neglected is the practice of prototyping the experiences that users will have together with the product or system. This becomes even more important as we move into a world of systems containing AI algorithms.

Protopie is a very valuable tool for prototyping experiences that embrace multiple people and multiple products (maybe software and hardware) or multiple interfaces.

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.

Keep trigger and response names visible

It is very important to annotate your code with what it is actually doing, but keeping the trigger and response names helps someone new to the project (or you in three month's time.

Arrays and multiple parameters

Protopie seems limited since a message can be sent using only one value as a parameter. However, arrays (written as text strings and manipulated by parseJson) can be used for contexts where multiple parameters need to be passed.

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.

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.

Rough, Rapid, Right

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.

Playing with time

A message sent to the current scene will be received by the object that sent it. But a message sent to Protopie Studio (Connect) will not be received by the pie that sent it. B ut what if there is nothing out there to respond to it?

Viewing variables within Components

Check if Protopie Connect is present

Origami Studio, Figma and others

Good Prototyping Practice

Receive and Assign hazard

Sending a message to another scene