Why I don’t like UXPin

I’m a full-time UX designer and the owner of Predictive UX, a user experience agency based out of the DC Metro Area.

As you might imagine, I’ve worked with a lot of products over the course of my career. I try to stay on top of what’s new and finally decided it was time to give UXPin — a wireframing tool — a go after seeing all of their articles on UX design.

Before I talk about UXPin — a little background.

Since 2012, I’ve been using HotGloo Classic:

Screen shot of a wireframe I did for AARP in HotGloo.

I’ve written on my website about why I love HotGloo Classic. I’m not sure you can get HotGloo Classic anymore as they’ve upgraded to 5, but HotGloo 5 is pretty slick. If you haven’t tried HotGloo, I highly recommend giving it a go.

I’ve used HotGloo to not only create low fidelity wireframes, I’ve also used it to create interactive, hi-fidelity wireframes and application flows.

Application flow for AARP Travel created using HotGloo

I have no real complaints about HotGloo, so trying UXPin was just to see what else was out there — but I wanted to be impressed.

I was drawn to the idea of the new, the we’re better, the idea that someone cool was going to up my game as a UX designer.

My UXPin Evaluation Criteria

The biggest things I hoped to get out of UXPin were:

1. Several pattern libraries that cut my UX design time down.
2. Some pre-made bootstrap grid overlays.
3. An awesome font library.
4. A tool for annotating wireframes that printed out a beautiful document for my clients.
5. A robust set of basic, ready to use, interactive elements so I didn’t have to take the time to create that stuff myself.

Trying UXPin

When I tried UXPin the first time, I honestly couldn’t figure out how to add text to the page. It was crazy to me that so many people were raving over this product and yet, this simple task was not intuitive for me.

Blank canvas in UXPin

Look at the screen shot above, it’s a blank canvas for a new project in UXPin. How do you begin typing text on this screen? Do you see a “T” anywhere or a drag and drop text area?

On top of that frustration, the canvas felt restrictive with only 800 pixels showing. There are two panels open by default when you start a new project, I am guessing UXPin assumes users want these panels open because it helps promote ease of use. They don’t really help me and there isn’t a control icon on either to collapse them. Using keyboard shortcuts to collapse panels like I do in HotGloo didn’t work in UXPin either.

I tried using the panels, going with the idea that they were there to help me get started. However, poorly delineated sections with no meaningful hierarchy caused my eyes to travel all over the place. My mouse was busy opening and closing stuff to try to find things and figure out what tools did what.

Overall, it seemed like too much stuff was jammed on the screen without a solid hierarchy. It felt like the focus of this product was on the product versus user needs.

I couldn’t quickly figure out how to get a basic design done that looked like my work. I sat there feeling stupid.

I decided to try to find what I had on my wish list for UXPin to see if it would make a difference.

1. I did find a pattern library, but patterns were broken up across so many different libraries that it was cumbersome to find things — even when I used search, I only got a couple hits and they weren’t what I wanted.
2. I did not find a bootstrap grid.
3. The font library was pretty great and had me feeling better about the tool.
4. I couldn’t find a way to annotate my wireframes.
5. The interactive elements were not only limited, they just weren’t the kind of elements I was looking for — I didn’t need a grouped set of designed elements— I wanted simple things like a mega menu, accordion, or multi-select that I could quickly edit to fit my needs.

Time to click the “x”

I almost wrote a review on the product in that moment, but I resisted because I felt so annoyed and a little ashamed. I thought, maybe it was me — maybe I just wasn’t savvy enough to use this product — even though I’ve been deeply embedded in UX design for the past six years and I’ve been in the creative digital space for 20+ years.

Think about that for a minute. I used a product that actually made me question myself and even feel bad about myself.

Screeeech. What a load of crap that was — this was a UX tool! Come on, it had to be usable, it can’t be me.

Being a UX designer, I thought a lot about how these feelings might be — and likely are — impacting product adoption for UXPin. People don’t typically recover from these kinds of experiences, they simply abandon a product forever.

Fast forward several months

Trying UXPin — again

Two things led me to try UXPin again:

1. UXPin showed up often in my research on UX related topics.
2. Since I had tried UXPin, I was on their email list, and I clicked on their articles here and there to see if they had some new insights.

These two things kept their product on my mind, ultimately leading me to try UXPin again. I reasoned they were working hard in the UX industry and so figured they must be making progress.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t do a trial of UXPin again because I’d already done the free trial and they don’t allow you to try again. In my opinion, a product should offer another free trial after new features are released or if more than 90 days have elapsed.

Since that wasn’t an option, I decided to go all in and chose the team plan for $98/month.

What the f*ck was I thinking?

I was thinking that I wanted to see what this thing had to offer for $98 a month!

I wanted to try all the team bells and whistles. I wanted to invite others to collaborate. And for only $98 per month I could invite two other team members — geez — I can’t help it, that is freaking ridiculous. It just is — a team of three for $98 a month? It’s a complete ripoff.

On my HotGloo account, I pay $28 a month and can invite a ton of people to collaborate, leave comments, and I have a whole library of stuff I created that makes using HotGloo super fast for me. And their COO, Wolf Becvar, has personally answered every single one of my emails since I started using the tool in 2012 — Wolf Bootstrappin’ Badass Becvar.

But what was really wrong for me with UXPin isn’t that they didn’t have a Wolf, it’s that I still couldn’t figure out the most basic stuff in UXPin.

I was still at a loss even though I spent more time trying to learn the tool than when I tried UXPin previously. I took my time and really poked around.

I figured out how to hide the right panel so I could see more of the canvas. I dealt with the way I had to scroll to the left and right to see everything on my canvas even after I hid the right panel. (Know how to hide a panel in UXPin? It’s not a setting on the panel itself, it’s up on the top nav bar under View.)

After tweaking the canvas and panel settings, I set up a page for a project I was actively working on. I had been doing the wireframes in HotGloo, so I saved a .png of my design from HotGloo and uploaded the image to UXPin so I could accurately use UXPin to re-create what I had designed in HotGloo.

After successfully creating the header elements, I needed to add an accordion to the page and I wanted it to be interactive. Surely for $98 a month, I can get an interactive accordion. Nope.

I didn’t bail.

I created the accordion on my own. I created a box, added an arrow, a flag icon for notifications, the text, and grouped all of the elements.

A single accordion row I created in UXPin

Next, I made a copy of the accordion row to create the onClick state.

After making the onClick state, I went through the arduous and unsuccessful task of trying to figure out how to make the first accordion interactive. I wanted to be able to click on the row and have it expand to show the contents, just like a real interactive accordion.

I couldn’t figure it out.

I had to look up a video. I shouldn’t need a training video to use a product, especially not a user experience product. I am glad videos exist and I support them in UX design. But when I am using a product designed for a field in which I am an expert and I need a video to use the product, that’s a huge failure.

After watching the video, I attempted to make the accordion interactive. Here are the steps I followed:

Select object 1 > Click the Interactions tab in the Properties panel > Figure out that State: 1st State is the default onLoad state > Click New Interaction > Select the Trigger and Action > Click Add > Click Preview > Click the object to see if it works.

Nope.

Instead, I saw both objects on the page — State 1: the accordion in the closed state and State 2: the accordion in the open state. I only wanted to see State 1 unless I clicked on State 1, then I wanted to only see State 2.

I realized I didn’t set the State 2 object to hidden onLoad. I fixed that and made sure it was set to show onClick.

I tested again. I only saw the closed state accordion. Awesome. I clicked on the closed accordion and it opened a blank page.

ARHHHHHHH!!!!!

I checked my settings, they looked correct. I re-tested, it didn’t work. I deleted the second state and started again.

I repeated this process several times before deciding I friggin’ hate UXPin.

I wanted to use UXPin on this project so I could give it a good, official run, and try team collaboration. But, in the end, I couldn’t justify using UXPin at all.

It wasn’t time wasted, however, as it reinforced how easy it is for products to get it wrong and frustrate users.

What I learned

1. It is smart to use whatever tools help you do your best work, even if everyone else is using the hottest new thing.
2. If a product isn’t working for users, it is not them — it’s most definitely the product.
3. (I already knew this, but it’s worth stating) Product design is hard. I struggle all the time with decisions I have to make and things I don’t have time to fix. UXPin cares. They responded to my tweet about being annoyed with their product because they engage with their users.

UXPin is great at marketing, customer engagement, and writing some thoughtful content. I’m just not sure about their product. I canceled my $98 a month plan and I won’t be back unless they make significant product changes and offer me a free trial.