Tips Archives

Introducing UXPin Community on Spectrum

The UXPin Community on Spectrum was closed on May 18th, 2020 due to changes in Spectrum. You can read about it in the We’re Leaving Spectrum blog post.

Today we’re super excited to break the news about our UXPin Community on Spectrum! It’s the long-awaited place where you can talk to our team, exchange tips to hone your UXPin skills, share your thoughts and make feature requests. On top of that, our customer support, product, and development teams are there to answer your questions.

We’ve started by answering what we think are the most popular questions you may ask:

How can I join UXPin Community?
To join, go to https://spectrum.chat/uxpin and create an account with Twitter, Facebook, Google or Github. Or click the help icon in the UXPin app:

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Is UXPin Community supported by the UXPin team?
Our customer support team, as well as product and development teams, will be taking an active part in the community and answering questions.

What kind of information can I find on UXPin Community?
You can read all previous discussions, product announcements, check tips & tricks, and get answers to your questions.

Join UXPin Community now!

Case Study – Real Story, Real Users, Real Help!

Today We’d Like To Brag A Little (Humbly, Of Course) About One Of UXPin’s Great Users. We’ll Be Introducing You To SocialPaths And Their Real-Life UXPin Adventure With Interactive Wireframes!

“We are no longer able to work without UXPin…”

SocialPaths (a.k.a. The Great User)
SocialPaths is a social media agency that, in their own Creative Director Piotr Zaniewicz’s words – mainly takes care of supporting all kinds of social media marketing activities. Their house speciality is engaging social media games connected to different kinds of loyalty programs that make good use of social media’s viral nature. Among many cool projects, the team at SocialPaths have created contest apps for the Facebook page of one of the biggest trance music festivals in Europe as well as a very popular app called The Great Advice of Mieciu The Eternal Student. While their apps are mainly created for Facebook, they also build interactive tabs for websites and contests.

KISS (a.k.a. The Biggest Work-Related Headache ; )
Working with clients isn’t always a bed of roses, the SocialPaths crew can vouch for that. Putting up with those occasional clients who always know best is one of the most annoying little problems SocialPaths encounters. Of course, clients have every right to have their vision of their product realized, BUT painting that vision in the form of a working app is sooooo complex and difficult that it’s not the piece of cake that clients think it is upfront. Our main problem that we face on an everyday basis is meeting client’s high expectations and stick to the golden KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) rule at the same time. Sometimes it is a struggle to convince client not to interfere where we know better – says Piotr Zaniewicz, Creative Director of SocialPaths.

UXPin (a.k.a. The Solution)
After a major brainstorming session, the SocialPaths team came to a conclusion about creating wireframes and interactive prototypes that could solve this problem, so they decided to try out some of the prototyping and wireframing apps out there. One of their friends sent them an interactive prototype made with UXPin and that gave them their first glimpse of our little baby.

Piotr, Creative Director of SocialPaths talks about what they were looking for exactly – We were in great need of tool that lets you create really advanced prototypes step by step so that our team would instantly know what parameters to consider while building (i.e. size, style, layout etc.) and that lets you create prototypes that REALLY visualize all the looks and features to the client.

It’s not easy to find a tool that does both, of course, but the final thing that made UXPin their weapon of choice was its ability to do everything online, so that there is no problem with keeping the project up to date; The newest version is always available to every member of the team at any given time. Another big plus was that UXPin’s really easy to implement – there’s no bigger pain than when the learning curve steals time instead of saving it: We were afraid of the implementation of new tool, but UXPin is so easy to use that after just a little while a fully functioning prototype went to the Graphic Designer – says Piotr.

The Conclusion (a.k.a. How UXPin Helped SocialPaths)
In our team, UXPin is used mainly by Project Managers and Designers who collect feedback and make on-the-spot changes to the projects according to our client’s wishes. In the first phase of the project creation, UXPin is the link between clients and our team. After three months of using UXPin we can honestly say it really does make our job easier! Thanks to making fully interactive, clickable prototypes, we avoid misunderstandings and unnecessary changes after the implementation. Our clients and us both save a lot of time. -Piotr Zaniewicz, SocialPaths

SocialPaths case is a great example of how wireframing saves time, money and refines communication. So why haven’t YOU used interactive wireframes to help YOUR business?

Create an account today and see firsthand how UXPin helps your!

Four Ways Of Making Your Wireframing Job Easier!

Is it even possible? Well… YES! We did a lot of listening and thinking lately and now we can proudly present four new features that will make your job easier and faster! So, let’s cut the chit-chat.

Feature One – Context-Sensitive Menu and the Properties Tab

After years of using non-web-based prototyping tools such as Axure, I am accustomed to right-clicking on elements and this is one area that unfortunately the limitations of the medium created some difficulty – right clicks within Chrome, for example, result in the Chrome popup window rather than any context-sensitive menus for JustProto itself. It wouldn’t be fair to criticism JustProto for this, however, as it’s a limitation that applies to all web-applications but I felt that because the interface is just so, well, slick, I kept forgetting that it was a web-app at all. – John Clark wrote reviewing JustProto.We took his words very seriously and decided to make a change. After all, people are creatures of habit ;) That is why, from now on, right clicking on the workbench or elements will show a brand new context-sensitive menu!

Also, when you click on any of the elements, the properties tab on the right will show up automatically. Small but significant improvement – saves two clicks before changing the element’s properties. :)

Feature Two – Grouping

You build this amazing wireframe, there’s a gallery there with 10 pictures. After you set it up, when everything’s ready, you need to resize the images to fit 4 new ones. And now what? Resize of all elements is long and can set you back. Resize one and then delete the rest and copy/paste? I don’t think so! From now on, the problem is gone. Grouping option just arrived to the scene! :) Select elements you need, group them and then resize and move everything the way you need it and how you like it. You can find the Group/Ungroup Options in the new Context-Sensitive Menu.

Feature Three – Fade To Gray

If you want to keep focused on the functionalities of the project and not on its outlook this is The Feature for you! It sometimes happens with the clients – showing them the wireframe is one endless series of questions like: “Why this button is light orange, it should be big and screaming red, and this blue line should be two pixels to the left…” And all the UX stuff is non-existing. Crashing into User Experience Iceberg happens a lot – see presentation by Trevor Van Gorp. Fade To Gray lets you… well… fade to gray everything that takes the attention away from UX and interactions of the wireframe.

Feature Four – Border Radius and Shadow

We added two new properties to the properties tab – Border Radius and Shadow. From now on, if you need shadow and rounded edges in your wireframe’s elements – no problem! Just select the element, set up shadow and border radius you want and need ET VOILA!

Also, a little tip: thanks to border radius you can now add a new shape to the wireframe – circle. Just play with the properties :)

We hope new features will help you make your work even easier and faster than before :) To try out new the new stuff login to your account or create new one.

How customer helps us to improve JustProto

A while ago we got a message from one of the users. Here’s what Mark said:

“I really wish that I could set the individual menu cell width for a horizontal menu so that when I am overlaying it on an existing web design that it will line up correctly with the existing menu tabs… is there any possible way to get that functionality in the software? I have been looking for this feature EVERYWHERE and nobody has it.”

Well, now no one can say “nobody has it” ;)
We took Mark’s suggestion under consideration and now it’s possible to set individual height and width for the menu element. You can do it manually – just click on the menu and you’ll see highlighted sections that you can set exactly how you need them.
What seemed to be a little improvement ended up being a big programming pain but eventually, we were able to set it up for Mark and all of you!

Kudos for Buka and Dooshek for not abandoning ship mid-project!

You can all try out the improvement here!

We love to get your feedback and we take all suggestions very seriously.
If there’s anything we can improve for you – just drop us a line!

New and improved Text Editor now in JustProto!

As part of a new JustProto version, we improved the text editor. Next to standard formatting options now you have available a few new ones. What options exactly? Take a look at the picture. Below the image, you’ll find a brief description of each new option.

Paste as plain text – this option helps you when when you want to add a tex full of links – without those links. While using previous editor you had to remove all links manually and that took some time. Now just select the Paste as plain text option and paste your linked text there – after you confirm all links will be automatically removed. Simpler and faster, right? :)

Paste – sometimes you need to paste the text with links. To do so just click on Paste, copy the text there, confirm et voila! :)

Find – sometimes it happens that the text you write is very long and you want to find one exact word in it. To find it faster use Find and type your chosen word there. It’ll be highlited in the editor window.

Find and replace – this option lets you to find an exact word and replace it with some other word chosen by you.

Clear formatting – when you highlight formated text and click this option all the formatting will be removed and set do default.

Add / remove link – this option gives you the chance to link a piece of text to another webpage somewhere on the web. Previous text editor didn’t have such an option – you had to add another text block to link it as the whole text was one big link. Now you can choose a certain part of the text and link it. Or unlink it using the Remove link option..

Select special character – gives you all kinds of special characters that you can add to your text: accents, umlauts or fractions.

Login to JustProto and check out new options!

Chat or refining communication once again.

Soon JustProto’s getting new feature – chat:)

Thanks to chat all collaborators will have the chance to talk over the project in JustProto without using any other chatlike solutions. Chat history will be saved in JustProto so users gain access to conversations – even if they go out of town – directly in the web browser. Thanks to Chat option new users and clients will also have the chance to follow older conversations to check what’s going on with the project. Pretty cool, isn’t it? ;)

Prototype your world using JustProto!

Components – new JustProto feature!

Here’s another great news for JustProto users. Long-awaited feature is now done and ready to be used.

Easily created components are a great tool for everyone who have problem with applying the same, multiple elements on various pages of prototype. They’re piece of cake to use – just click Add like you do it adding pages, and tick the Component option. Now create your Component with elements and when you’re done – drag&drop it on your pages. It’s that simple.

All changes that you apply on Components are automaticly shown on all your pages, so you don’t need to worry about changing properites of similar elements on every single page. That’s gonna significantly speed up the work, especially while making advanced prototypes.

See for yourself how easy is creating, using and changing Components and then try it on your prototype!

Let’s communicate! Part 1

It’s not a secret that our business success highly depends on our communication skills.

Paradoxically, many companies forgot to put those skills on the top of training list. How many project didn’t start because of our account manager / sales representative communication impotence? Probably we won’t ever now (or statistics are so dramatic, that’s better not to know them ). What’s the most important, and how the communication process goes? What we should pay biggest attention to? Who is more communicative – women or men, what are differences between their skills ?

Below, I will try to shed some light on a burning question of communication between company and it’s client, by giving some practical tips and advice.

7 seconds

We sit in a restaurant, drinking nice coffee, waiting for an appointment with client. Finally, we see him coming through restaurant’s doors. We establish an eye contact, and it’s about to shake hands.

This is a time-twinkle, quick and unnoticed. What can happen during this 7 sec time period? You may say “not much”. Researchers from New York University proved that people make eleven decisions about us in the first seven seconds of contact, they estimate our:

education level,
economic level,
perceived creditability and believability,
trustworthiness,
level of sophistication,
sexual identification,
level of success,
political background,
religious background,
ethnic background and
social and professional desirability.

Shocked? Fortunately or unfortunately, perception is everything! First impression is an instinct, fully natural reaction, which can’t be switched off. From verbal and non-verbal signs we get picture strongly colored with emotions which remains and affect on our behaviour in the future.

If we came off badly, nothing is lost – the way we communicate also contributes to the first impression. Let’s make communication happen, and make first (good) impression long lasting one.

The first impression should be consistent with a further course of our conversation.Consistency of the two phases provides itself-confidence. You want the first seven seconds of contact to be positive. Those seven seconds may change the rest of your life, even business one.

In second part you will find few useful hints about conducting successful conversations with client.