UX Prototyping & Protopie

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.

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 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.

Use overridable variables in components

By using an overridable variable in your components you can have many instances of the component in your scene, but with different values for the same variable.

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.

Origami Studio, Figma and others

How do these other popular platforms compare?

Moving between Figma and Protopie

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?

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.

How to inspect variables inside a component

Distinctive initial variable values

Playing with time

parseJson gives no error message

Why use Protopie?

Using the wrong mental model for Protopie