This is the first article in a series explaining the fundamentals of getting started with ProtoPie Formulas. — Formulas are a part of ProtoPie that enable us to create even richer and realistic prototypes. They allow us to tap into many properties of the graphics we import in and allow us to manipulate them. Values such as the X and Y position or opacity to name just a…

The ability to design interactively continues to increase as software and hardware become more advanced but is it evolving fast enough and in the right way? — I’ve been thinking about prototyping a lot recently. Both in terms of how it has evolved over the last few years and its role within design. We now have tools that give us the capability to imagine our designs beyond static graphics and simple click-thru’s and it’s changed how we…

ProtoPie is an interaction design tool that affords advanced capabilities enabling designers to create bigger more realistic experiences. The trouble is, this often leads to prototypes that are inflexible, error-prone, and hard to manage. That’s when thinking like a developer can really help. — ProtoPie’s goal has always been to give designers autonomy. To do that ProtoPie needs to work the way a designer thinks. …

ProtoPie has rebuilt the importing feature for Adobe XD. Supporting a wealth of new features that are sure to improve your XD to ProtoPie workflow. — What ProtoPie now calls the legacy importer had many shortcomings. Things like only importing graphics as PNGs and only being able to import a single artboard at a time. Thankfully those things have now been fixed with the new ProtoPie plugin for Adobe XD. …

On the 31st of December, at 00:00, Adobe discontinued support for the flash player. This story is my personal account of Flash and my experience with it. How Flash influenced my career and why I’m so thankful for it. — I first met Macromedia Flash at its third version. I was working as a graphic designer in a small London based design consultancy. I saw the web for the first time after a hard days work training some designers to use QuarkXpress. After a few minutes, I was hooked. …

Prototyping can sometimes feel like you’ve fallen down a rabbit hole. Bugs and continuity issues, performance problems are just some things that crop up daily. But don’t worry I’ve got your back, here I share tips and tricks I’ve picked up that will help take some of the stress out of prototyping. — 1. The smoke and mirrors technique Prototypes are fake. It’s easy to forget this especially with advanced tools like ProtoPie or Framer. So tip number one is don’t try too hard to make things as they will be built in a real app. I like to think of prototyping like a movie set. You just need…

Digital design is constantly evolving. Gone are the days when we could only design statically, churning out design comp after design comp. In this article, I explore how tools have shaped the way we design and talk to some of the pioneers who created these tools to get the view on design tools past, present and future. — In the beginning, when the world wide web was new and web pages were simple, we designed websites in Adobe Photoshop. At the time it made sense. …

With ProtoPie 5.0 comes interaction libraries. You could build interaction components already but now you can turn it into a full-blown interaction design system to share with your team. — Libraries have been a long-requested feature and it's great they are finally here. So let's explore how ProtoPie has addressed the sharing and management of reusable interactions and how it might change the way you handle prototyping in your organization.

Everything you need to know about ProtoPie components but was too afraid to ask. — Components give you a huge amount of power when you are creating prototypes. You can create a set of components that can be dragged and dropped into a prototype and just work. …