Tec's soup - posts tagged 'pidoco° News'

Pidoco is hiring!

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 15:56:58 GMT

We’re looking for web developers, freelancers and interns in software programming and marketing. If you would like to work for a fun and exciting startup email us at info@pidoco.com. For more information go to https://pidoco.com/en/company/jobs.

We would love to hear from you!

Adding Folders and Custom Stencils

Fri, 06 Jan 2012 13:04:57 GMT

As already mentioned in our previous blog post about the new navigation that we implemented, there were a few new features that had to be finished before we can continue deploying the new version of pidoco. That is also the reason why we weren’t able to deploy this yet, since the features first had to be tested and stabilized to include them into this new preview. Up to now we have finished four out of the five open issues that we mentioned in the other blog post:

Navigation to other pages

We added a little menu to each breadcrumb that opens when you hover over the little grey arrow as shown in the screenshot. It lists all the elements on the same level and you can pick one to switch to that view. We also added a button that opens the desired view in a new browser tab such that you then can easily switch between several views. This way, navigating through your prototype should be as fast as before.

Folders

You can now add folders to your prototype where you can put anything inside. This allows for better organization of all the pages, layers, etc that your prototype contains. In order to move an item to a different folder, use the context menu. A drag and drop moving into a folder has not been implemented yet.

Custom stencils

We already have layers to reuse groups of elements across several pages, but they are always at the same position. From now on you can convert a group of elements into a so called custom stencil that then appears in the palette and can be added anywhere in your prototype. You can add several instances of it to the same page, you can choose different positions, and any change will automatically be applied to all the instances.

New visual design

Since it already took longer to implement things up to now, we skipped this part and will change the design in one of the next versions.

Stability

A whole lot of bugs have been fixed already, but there are still some left to be fixed. As long as we are not satisfied with the quality we won’t deploy the new version. However, it shouldn’t take very long anymore until we reach that point.

Let us know what you think

We would love hearing from you what you think about this new version! If you have any suggestion or feel that there is something important still missing, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us.

Chat with us.
Feel free to send us a tweet: @pidoco
We are happy about any email we receive: support@pidoco.com
You may even give us a call: +49 30 4881 6385

Many thanks for your support!

After a long journey: our iPhone app is available

Fri, 04 Nov 2011 18:07:33 GMT

It has been three months ago that we added the pidoco Mobile Edition for you to create specific iOS prototypes, which you can run directly on your iPhone or iPad using our new apps. Since then we were discussing with Apple to get our iPhone app into the store. Today, we’re happy to announce that the app finally is available in the App Store!

When you search for it you may notice that we have a Pidoco app that is for 99 cents and a Pidoco HD app that is for free. You may ask, why you have to pay for the app? Unfortunately, Apple’s App Store policies prevent our app from being free because pidoco° itself is a paid service. So, for your benefit, we chose the minimum possible price. With the iPad version of our app we were just lucky to get it approved before we made our pricing public, therefore it is still for free. But once we have to add a new version, this is likely to be changed.

If it were for us to decide you would get the app for free. However, we preferred having the app in the store instead of having no app at all. Our hope is that you will understand that to date it was not possible to get a free pidoco app into the store. Having now achieved that the app is in the store we will continue to think about a solution that both satisfies Apple to make some money with our app and you to get the app for free. After the last three months, I’m not yet convinced that this solution will be possible in the short term, but we’ll work on it.

Oh, you haven’t heard about Pidoco Mobile yet? Please read this article that describes how the mobile edition works.

Our biggest improvement is on the finish line: the tabs are gone!

Wed, 12 Oct 2011 09:36:38 GMT

As you may know from previous blog posts (Redesign, First Step, and Second Step) we are working for quite a long time on improving pidoco with a completely new navigation of our prototype creator. We do this in preparation for a few new features like folders or your own stencils.

The most visible change that we did: we removed the tab navigation and introduced a breadcrumb navigation. Have a look how this will look like in the future (we plan to deploy this into our live system in November):

The first row of the pidoco interface now contains three elements: to the left we added two buttons that navigate back and forth in your browser history. Next to them is a breadcrumb component that always shows where you are in your prototype. In the upper right corner we placed some helpful links, like our support chat.

The new features in detail:

Breadcrumbs: whenever you open a page, screenflow, or layer for editing, the breadcrumbs will show where you are. You can do various things with them:
- Open the context menu to edit any property of the given item
- Edit the name by double clicking on a crumb. This works also for the name of the prototype
- Navigate to other items (not yet included in preview) by choosing it from the list of items that are on the same level
- Open the item in a new browser tab by pressing Ctrl or Cmd while clicking
Browser Tabs: you may know our real time collaboration feature. We now use this feature to sync several native browser tabs with the same prototype. This way you can open the same prototype in several tabs (or windows) and have all the pages or layers accessible that you are currently working on.
Browser History: we enabled pidoco to track in your browser history where you have navigated while prototyping. This allows for using the history back and forth buttons. You may use the native browser buttons or the two buttons in the upper left corner, which do the same as the native buttons.
Bookmarks: add the pages or layers that you need most often to your bookmarks. Since we enhanced the URL, the prototype can be opened directly in any specific page or layer.
Global layer in Prototype View: up to now, we only show the pages and screenflows in the prototype view. With this version, we also added the global layers such that you can immediately open a layer for editing, no matter on which page it is visible.

In the current preview we have only two levels for the breadcrumbs: the prototype view and any other view in the second level. With only these two levels, the breadcrumbs may not yet make big sense. However, we plan to add further levels soon. Both within the prototype (folders) and on top of the prototype (maybe something like projects that wrap several prototypes). Especially with the folders you will realize the full power of this feature.

These screenshots show the different views and how the breadcrumbs and the URL change in all the views. For comparison, the following screenshot shows the current (old) version with the tab navigation.

When will this be available?

We know that people prefer what they are used to. And because of the big impact of this change on the way you use pidoco, we decided to give you the chance to preview what is coming up before we deploy this feature. This way you can get a feeling of how to use pidoco in the future and the surprise is hopefully not too big when we have this in our live system.

The current state of the preview is not exactly the state that will be deployed. These things will be done before deployment:

Navigation to other pages: we want to add a feature to the breadcrumbs that shows you a list of items on the same level, where you can open any of these items with one click. Currently, it is required to go one level up and choose the item to open, which is a step we want to provide a shortcut for.
Folders: we very likely will add folders to your prototype such that you can organize your pages and that the breadcrumbs will make more sense.
“Custom stencils” (working title): a while ago we already started working on a feature where you can create your own stencils out of a group of elements. Our plan is to add this feature as well, because we were missing only the breadcrumb navigation to complete this feature.
New visual design: together with the breadcrumb navigation we developed a facelift of our visual design as well. Although we didn’t decide it yet, we may include the new design as well.
Stability: although we did a lot of tests for this preview version, we did not yet fix all the tiny bugs. Until we deploy this version you can be sure that we will fix all of them.

The time frame for all this to become the next version of pidoco is November. We will create another preview version a few days before go-live to show you how this will finally look like.

What if I have an idea / feedback on this?

If you have had a look at the preview and want to get in touch with us, please go ahead and let us know:

Chat with us. You can pick anyone in our chat support, but if I am online you can also talk directly to me, Volker.
Feel free to send us a message on twitter: @pidoco
We are happy about any email we receive: support@pidoco.com
It’s also possible to leave us a comment on facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pidoco
We do have a feedback forum where you can add new requests and vote existing ones: http://pidoco.uservoice.com
You may even give us a call: +49 30 4881 6385

We are looking forward to talking to you and hearing your feedback!

Congratulations To Our Lucky Chromebook Winners

Wed, 05 Oct 2011 16:44:33 GMT

A couple of months ago we announced our Easter Egg Hunt campaign to mark the debut of the Pidoco Web App on the Google Chrome Web Store. To commemorate this occasion we promised to give away nine Google Chromebooks by Samsung as prizes to a few lucky winners among the Pidoco Web App users who managed to find the easter egg hidden in our app. We at Pidoco would like to extend a big thank you to all that participated in the contest and congratulate our lucky winners! A big thank you also goes out to Google Germany for sponsoring the Chromebooks.

For users of Google’s Chrome web browser the Pidoco Web App comes in as a great improvement since it allows users to edit, share, and manage their Pidoco prototypes more quickly and efficiently. Upon installation a large icon is added to the New Tab page that allows you to easily find and open Pidoco with one click! Further more you can set the Pidoco Web App to open in a regular tab, pinned tab, or in full-screen mode. As a web-based wireframing application, the Pidoco Web App offers you the latest in wireframing and prototyping capability and stays up-to-date as we add new releases. Thanks to Chrome’s sync you can access the Pidoco Web App no matter what computer you’re using.

Our lucky winners can now use the Pidoco Web App on their new Chromebooks: It now takes as little as 8 seconds to boot up and start prototyping! The all day battery as well as the built-in WiFi and 3G ensure mobility free from malware and viruses. The Chromebooks will be going out to winners mainly in Germany, but two will travel as far as the United Kingdom and Sweden. Some of the happy winners have even managed to come to our office to pick up their Chromebooks in person. Here are some pics!

Pidoco Mobile: Create and Test iOS Prototypes

Tue, 21 Jun 2011 15:47:17 GMT

We’ve constantly been asked whether we do have some specific iOS stencils for pidoco. Today we can say, yes we do!

We are starting the roll-out of Pidoco Mobile with a private beta phase where you may be added to create iOS prototypes and test them directly on your device. Some of you may now ask, ‘and what about Android?’ Once we have fully rolled out the iOS part of Pidoco Mobile we start working on Android, so please be a little patient about it.

What is Pidoco Mobile?

It consists of two parts: the web application for creating the iOS prototypes (as you know pidoco already, but with new stencils) and the iOS app to simulate the prototypes on your device.

For the web application, you need to have a modern browser on your desktop PC (or Mac, for sure). We officially support Firefox, Safari (Mac only is recommended), or Google Chrome. On top, we heard that Microsoft IE 9 is working well, too, although not yet being officially supported. The iOS prototypes that you can create do run only in these browsers plus Opera and IE 9. We skipped the support for the older IE versions (8 and earlier) to simplify our development efforts. In general, if your browser supports native SVG then it is very likely to run our prototypes.

The iOS app provides you with a list of your iOS prototypes. First, pick one of these prototype and you see its pages. Then pick a page and the prototype is opened in either the sketched or plain mode. Take it from there to test your prototype, get a feeling for the correct sizes and measurements of the elements, and see whether your concepts work. We have added a demo account with which you can try a prototype of the Facebook app to give you an impression of what’s possible. The pidoco app is available for both iPhones and iPads.

How can I participate?

To install the iOS app on your device, please sign up with testflight right from your device. You will then have to register your device so we can add it to the builds of our app. (You might have heard that for such a test, we have to add every single device to the app for it to be installable.) If you followed the above link then we will be informed and can create a new build that we then can send you. To install the build you will have to open the link from the email on your device, the rest is done by testflight. (If you want to know more about testflight, read how to become a tester.)

If you already have a pidoco account, then we need to activate the iOS prototypes for that account. The best way is to send us a short mail (contact@pidoco.com). In case you have not yet an account you may create one and use the 31 days free trial. In this case we also need to activate your account before you can create an iOS prototype.

I have feedback. How do I let you know?

We know that this beta version of Pidoco Mobile might not yet be complete and that you will very likely miss a feature. If we know about this we can add it to our development process. There are different ways of how to tell us such ideas:

You can chat with us: https://pidoco.com/contact/chat
Feel free to send us a message on twitter: @pidoco
We are happy about any email we receive: contact@pidoco.com
It’s also possible to leave us a comment on facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pidoco
We do have a feedback forum where you can add new requests and vote existing ones: http://pidoco.uservoice.com
You may even give us a call: +49 30 4881 6385

Just pick a channel to talk to us, we’re happy to hear from you!

(Please note that we created the Facebook prototype on our own and only for demo purposes. There was no involvement of Facebook.)

Use our Chrome Web Store-App and find our Easter Egg

Thu, 16 Jun 2011 09:57:59 GMT

Together with Google Germany we have developed an app for the Chrome Web Store to ease the access to pidoco.com if you are using Google’s browser. To install the app simply open the (German) store with Google Chrome and search for the pidoco app. After you installed the app, simply open a new tab to see it listed.

Play with the pidoco app and find our Easter Egg

We have hidden a little surprise in pidoco if you are using it through the Chrome App. You just have to play around and try all our features, at some point you will stumble upon it. Once you found it make sure to follow the links and get into the raffle for some shiny chromebooks!

Happy searching!

Feature Snapshot: Working with Layers

Wed, 30 Mar 2011 13:34:55 GMT

Layers in Pidoco are a fantastic way to save time when creating and adapting prototypes. Many already know layers from software programs like PhotoShop. Pidoco features a similar concept that allows users to group and re-use elements, but with one crucial difference: Layers are global in Pidoco.

Global Layers are a great way to save time when creating prototypes in Pidoco.

Global Layers are templates that can be reused within a prototype. You can hide and unhide them on any page of a prototype. This means that a layer can be created for the menu bar and website navigation and subsequently be used on all pages with one simple click. This way parts of a website or a web app that appear often do not have to be recreated for every page. In addition, different sections of a page can be compartmentalized into different layers in relation to tasks. An example of this is a webpage with different panes.

Layers in Pidoco are global meaning that any edits made to a layer while on a particular page will affect the layer on all other pages of the prototype where the layer is activated. This is a very handy feature when it comes to adapting a prototype or trying out UI design alternatives: Simply make a copy of the prototype and change the original layer to reflect the new concept. Or create an alternative layer in the same prototype and unhide the original one on those pages where you want the changes to be effective. So here’s how it works.

Creating Global Layers in Your Prototype

Layers can be created easily within a prototype when you are in the Page View, i.e. after opening any page of the prototype. To create a new layer in your prototype simply click on the “Create” button in the My Global Layers panel on the right hand side of the screen. Voilà! Doing so will generate a new global layer that will appear as a new entry at the top of the list of layers in My Global Layers. To rename the layer double click on it in My Global Layers and enter the desired name in the text field that appears.

Creating a new global layer for your prototype takes just one mouse click.

The new layer will automatically be shown on the page you have opened and will be pre-selected so that you can start editing the new layer right away. Layers can be edited in the same way that you would edit the page: Simply drag the UI elements (stencils) from the Stencil Palette on the left hand side onto the layer. You can group them, align them, change attributes, or link them up with other pages. Once you’re done editing the layer, simply switch back to the page by selecting the page above the My Global Layers list.

With the drag & drop function, editing layers is just as easy as editing pages.

By the way, you can edit any layer that is part of the page you’re on by selecting it under My Global Layers. If you want to edit a layer that is not active on the opened page you have to first display it by selecting the checkbox or switch to a page where it is already in use. At this point it is good to remind yourself that layers are global and that any change will affect all pages throughout the entire prototype on which the layer is displayed.

How to use layers

Let’s say you’ve just created a few new layers, for example for the main navigation of your website or the utilities. You can now use them on any page of your prototype without having to redo the work. To display (or unhide) and use a layer on a page, open that page in the Page View and select (activate) the checkbox of the desired layer. Doing so will make the layer visible on that page.

Layers can be added to prototype pages by simply activating them via the checkbox.

All layers that are visible on the page are marked by a check in the checkbox in the My Global Layers list. Hidden (inactive) layers appear without a check. To hide a layer from a page simply do the reverse: Open that page in the Page View and deselect (deactivate) the checkbox of the desired layer in My Global Layers. Doing so will make the layer invisible on that page. Remember you cannot edit a hidden layer.

The My Global Layers panel lists all available layers. Simply select the ones you need on any page in your prototype.

This of course also works not only for the navigation of a website, but also for footers, side menus and various other items that you want to re-use. Layers can also be used to model various states of the same page. Say, for example, you wanted to distinguish between the homepage of a web portal before and after the user has logged in. Simply create two layers for the different states of the utilities and/or navigation and duplicate the homepage. Display one layer on each page. Since the links on your layers are also global, you can even include different navigation paths using this method.

Managing Layers

All layers available in a prototype are listed in My Global Layers panel on the right-hand side of the prototype while in the Page View. There is no natural hierarchy among layers, but you can order them by dragging them to the desired position in My Global Layers with your mouse.

Ordering layers is easy and quick in the My Global Layers list via drag and drop.

The top layer in the list will be displayed on top of all others, and so on. Note that the page entry above My Global Layers is not a layer, but represents the page you are on. Elements contained directly on the page will be displayed on top of all layers.

So, this gives you a brief idea of what layers can do for you. Have you tried the layer feature yourself? We’d love to hear about your experience.

About Feature Snapshots: Feature Snapshots address topics that are essential in the daily work of interface designers and all those using wireframes for professional purposes. As such, they are intended to help you learn how to tackle such challenges using Pidoco. One of the key benefits of prototyping is the possibility of working with design alternatives to find out which best suits business and user needs. This particular Feature Snapshot is about working with layers in Pidoco and how it can support the iterative design process.

Hunting for Performance

Tue, 22 Mar 2011 21:59:59 GMT

We just applied some hot fixes to our JavaScript Code that improves the server roundtrips while editing a prototype. We received reports about this performance issue for quite a while, but were unable to find the cause for this until now. From a developer point of view, it is always difficult to work on such things if you cannot reproduce it on your machine or in some test environment. In this case, I was lucky to chat with a user last week, with whose prototype I could see the issue and identify the problem. Today, we found a solution that lead to a speed improvement of a factor of 10. We hope that you can feel this improvement when you work with pidoco from now on.

The change of today is one in a series of performance improvements that we did during the past months. In January, we were able to speed up our database and optimize every request to our server. In February, we could improve the loading time of the rendered prototypes and show the contents of a page earlier in a page load. And now in March, we again accelerated the server roundtrips, but this time the part in your browser. Since we do rely on your feedback while working with pidoco, we’d appreciate if you could give us another challenge for April. Which part would you say is still too slow? Where should we continue to hunt for performance? Let us know!

Changing our UI: introducing the ‘prototype view’

Mon, 13 Dec 2010 17:17:43 GMT

A while ago I posted about the redesign of pidoco and how we implemented the first step of it. Now the second step is approaching.

In about a week we will deploy a new release of pidoco including a major change in the UI. Since we change the ‘home screen’ of the prototype, we felt the need to announce this modification ahead of time. The screenshot shows a preview of this new home screen, that we call the ‘prototype view’.

This view contains all the pages and screenflows of your prototype represented as icons in a grid. The upper part shows the pages and the lower part the screenflows. Both lists are ordered by name, giving you the possibility to adjust the ordering by changing the names. In order to add a page you can either click the ‘+’ button next to the ‘Pages’ title or use the new ‘add’ icon in our toolbar. To open an item, just double click on it as everywhere in pidoco.

In contrast to the screenflows we do not use thumbnails in the prototype view for one reason: performance. Although browsers have become a lot faster than two years ago, they still have trouble rendering complex vector graphics. Therefore, we use simple icons for each item. Our goal is to accelerate opening different pages, which you had to do via a screenflow before.

Another improvement that comes with this new view is that we can hide the panel on the right hand side for both the prototype view and the screenflow view. This provides you with some more screen space when working with screenflows, especially if you are using a rather small screen.

We expect this release to arrive the next weekend, so be prepared to a different look of pidoco when you open your prototypes the next week.

Looking back: World Usability Day 2010

Fri, 26 Nov 2010 11:30:24 GMT

The German UPA hosted the World Usability Day in Berlin this year on November 11 as part of a larger World Usability Day 2010 that took place across Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. The theme was communication, specifically how our communication methods impact technological developments and information services now as well as into the future. Said Elizabeth Rosenzweig, a founding member of the event, “World Usability Day 2010 will serve as an impetus to creating greater awareness for designs, products and services that improve and facilitate communication around the world.”

World Usability Day 2010 in Berlin. Image Source: www.wud-berlin.de

Berlin’s World Usability Day focused on mobile communication, specifically how Smartphones, iPads, laptops, etc. affect communication in our daily lives and the resulting implications, risks and benefits, for UX design and usability. If you are a part of the creative industry or are simply interested in usability, the World Usability Day is a must. So, as a worthwhile investment put it on your agenda for next year. Pidoco was proud to support World Usability Day 2010 as a sponsor and we will be on the scene again next year. We hope to see you there!

Feature Snapshot: Embedding Prototypes in Office Documents

Sat, 06 Nov 2010 00:39:56 GMT

Pitching an idea or concept for a new website or application to your client is not only about understanding what your client wants, but also about developing a presentation that allows you to demonstrate that your product will satisfy your client’s requirements. Delivering a good product presentation is the art of convincing clients that your work is worth their time and money. Unfortunately, it can be a real hassle to update a presentation if you change your mind about a key aspect of the concept, especially when you are using images of the user interface to visualize key ideas or scenarios of use in your presentation. And the same problem often arises again when you have to update a presentation or specification document after receiving feedback from a client.

Pidoco offers an easy solution to this problem! The Direct Link feature allows you to continually update images of your prototype within various office documents, for example a PowerPoint presentation. This gives users the ability to update office documents to the most recent version of a prototype without the hassle of using copy and paste on each individual image. Using the direct link feature users can embed links to various prototypes within a presentation and then send the file to clients or colleagues for documentation or reviewing. The embedded links will appear as graphics of the related prototype in the document. Unlike static images, however, the embedded images can be updated with just one mouse click, sparing users from the unfortunate job of having to manually exchange old images versus newer ones, one by one. Updating the embedded links synchronizes the images in the document with the current version of the Pidoco prototype found online thereby ensuring that the latest changes are automatically incorporated into the presentation.

Step 1: Extracting a link from Pidoco

Image 1: The direct linking dialogue window.

Using embedded images with Pidoco prototypes is easy. Here’s an example of how to use the direct link feature with Microsoft’s PowerPoint software. In order to embed a direct link into your PowerPoint presentation you must first extract a link from Pidoco. To do this, open your Pidoco prototype. Go to the Screenflow View of your open prototype and open the page that you want to embed into PowerPoint. Then point at the “Share” button in the Toolbar and click on the “Get a link to this Prototype” option. You will see the dialogue window shown in image 1.

Copy the link located in the text field marked “PNG”. This is the link you will embed into PowerPoint.

Step 2: Embedding the link into PowerPoint

Image 2: Inserting a direct link into a PowerPoint presentation

After you have copied the link to your prototype from Pidoco’s website, you can embed it into an opened presentation. Go to your PowerPoint presentation to complete the embedding process. Open the “Insert” option located on the Office Toolbar and click on the “Picture” option as shown in image 2:

Image 3: Using the dropdown menu options to embed a direct link

Once you have clicked on the picture option, the following “Insert Pictures” options will appear (image 3):

Image 4: The result: A neatly inserted image of the prototype that can be easily synchronized with the original prototype

Paste the link into the text field labeled “File Name”. Then open the dropdown menu of the “Insert” button, and select the “Insert and Link” command. The image of your prototype will appear in the selected slide of your PowerPoint presentation, as can be seen in image 4:

Step 3: Synchronizing Prototype and PowerPoint Presentation

Now that you have embedded the image it is easy to synchronize the presentation with the most current version of your prototype. To do so, click on the Office Button and point to the “Prepare” option. Click on “Edit Links to Files” (image 5):

Image 5: Easy synchronizing of presentation and prototype with one mouse click

Clicking on this option will automatically update your presentation to include the most recent state of the prototype created in Pidoco.

Benefits of the Direct Link Feature

Summing things up, Pidoco’s Direct Link feature is a fast and easy way to keep your files up-to-date even when your prototypes change frequently, which often happens in early design phases. This will help you communicate and share information better with your clients or colleagues and will minimize the time you spend on updating presentation and specs.

Stories told by UX professionals

Tue, 02 Nov 2010 08:37:31 GMT

When working with people you collect a lot of stories about and around your profession. Jan Jursa, a good friend of us, has collected 42 such stories in a free eBook UX Storytellers. People he met at different UX conferences and events have contributed to this project, among whom are names that you may already know (Dave Malouf, Mark Hurst, Henning Brau, to name a few) and a lot that at least I have not yet heard of. Nevertheless, you will find stories about all kinds of topics: accepting Star Wars at work, how a UX pro goes car shopping, how driving a cab or sex and drugs lead to being a UX pro, and the famous Acme Corp appears as well. Thanks to a sneak preview I was able to read a few stories, so I can tell you that it is worth having a look at this collection. Happy reading!

Group things that belong together

Thu, 14 Oct 2010 07:12:19 GMT

After our release back in August where we improved the usability of our layer system, it’s time for another major feature on our road to redesign pidoco: groups. With the current release you can group several elements together such that they behave as one single element. You can move them, clone them, copy them to a different page, do whatever you like, without the need to first select all single items. It is also possible to add groups to another group.

Why is this a major feature? Because groups will become custom stencils in the future. To be more precise: you will be able to convert a group into a custom stencil that is available in your palette. This way, you will be able to change several occurrences of such a stencil at once by modifying the custom stencil. But this is future talk, for now there are just simple groups.

This not being enough, we also added two new stencils: unordered and ordered lists. They can be edited similar to the way you define the hierarchy of a menu but are converted to the HTML ul and ol elements. All entries that begin with stars (*) are unordered items and all entries with the hash (#) are ordered items. This way, you can also mix both types in one list.

Do you have ideas for further stencils? Are you missing a feature very bad? Have a look at our feedback forum and add your thoughts or vote for existing suggestions.

New Release: Improved Usability of Layer System

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 08:48:45 GMT

Some weeks ago I blogged about how we are redesigning pidoco. Yesterday, we finished the second iteration of Usability Tests. Although we did not yet analyze the test results in detail, our impression is that we did the right steps with this iteration and we may now continue with designing some details.

In the meantime, we started with improving the layer system of pidoco. We know of many people who struggled with the layers and needed some time to understand how pages and layers are related to each other. Another issue was the way too long list of layers that you got when prototyping for a while.

The new implementation solves these issues with just a small change: every page may contain elements itself. You can think of a special layer for each page, that is not shown in the Global Layer Repository. All elements of a page are on top of any layer that is visible on the page, but you still may rearrange the global layers among themselves. To represent this special layer (or better to say, the page) we added a new item on top of the global layer repository, which you can choose to edit the elements just as you would choose a layer:

The big advantage of this system is that if you want to you may ignore the layers completely and just work with pages. And once you are at the point that things get too complex on a page you can add layers to structure things. Without all the layers that just appear on one page the global layer list is a lot less cluttered now. An improvement we only realized while implementing this feature is that our word export now makes a lot more sense having a chapter for pages and one for global layers.

We’d be happy to know what you think about this improvement. Please feel free to chat with us and tell us whether this helps you or is just confusing you.

Funky Code: All Things Technical

Fri, 30 Jul 2010 14:06:49 GMT

This blog is intended to cover many different things around Usability and Wireframing and some related stuff we do at pidoco. In some situations we were hesitating with publishing things of our daily work at pidoco that are rather technical and might be a little misplaced in here. Therefore, we started the blog funky code a while ago with some of our fellow students from Hasso Plattner Institute where we can publish all our ideas about web development, working at a startup, project management, or what just comes to our mind.

Today I published the second part of a double blog post on JavaScript testing (first part) and how automated tests can be integrated into a continuous integration server (second part). If you think that such topics could be of interest to you, please feel free to bookmark http://fun.kyco.de or add it to your favorite feed reader. If that is not the case, you won’t be bothered with these things in here anymore.

Eat your own dog food: Designing the next version of pidoco with pidoco

Thu, 15 Jul 2010 17:18:34 GMT

We have been using pidoco ourselves for years. But right now it is getting more interesting since we are working on the next version of pidoco.

In our usual development cycle of three weeks we concentrated on many smaller improvements and little features that help you prototype faster. With the next version we want to implement bigger improvements like adding more structure to the repository and editor, allowing for easier reusing of smaller components within your prototypes, or increasing the flexibility regarding the interactions that you can model with pidoco. This will include the suggestions that we received through our uservoice forum or that were mentioned in our support chat.

Making such big steps will be a nice challenge that we are facing. Currently, we are developing a prototype of the final version that is supposed to include all changes we would like to do. After some initial brainstorming a while ago, Tino started to create the prototype. And he surprised me with some very creative elements, like the little boxes with a ‘V’ inside, which are menus with just one top level entry. They act as simple hover menus, very similar to our current context menu.

Having this initial prototype, we invited some few people to remote usability tests. They were asked by Tino to do some simple tasks, mainly navigating through the given dummy prototype. (Now it’s getting recursive…) Since we used our own tool, we did not have to travel to Frankfurt am Main or Hamburg to meet the people for one hour of test. The complete session was recorded, including all mouse and keyboard interaction and the voice of both Tino and the test participant. That enabled me to review the test sessions, making notes, and collecting all the ideas that arose throughout the tests.

With the notes I spent most of this week in modifying the prototype, applying some simple ideas from the tests, and thinking of solutions for issues we realized during the tests. Following will be an internal review with our team and, possibly in the course of the next two weeks, a further round of remote tests. Until now I’m quite happy how everything worked together. Conducting a test with no setup time, handing over the prototype to different people to work on without any hassle, being able to describe many ideas in the prototype without too much work.

Once we think the concept is kind of finished, the real challenge will start. We do not want to lock our doors for two years and implement the next version in one step. We’d rather like to cut the concept down into manageable pieces that we can implement in a short period of time. Usually, we tried to deploy a new version every third week. This time we might have to break with this rule, but my hope is that we can do most things within 6 weeks (two sprints) or at most 9 weeks, which makes a new version at least every second month. That said, let’s see how it will be in reality. I’ll write some updates every now and then…

Now back to my prototype.

UXcamp Europe: wow!

Wed, 09 Jun 2010 10:22:31 GMT

Wow!

That is all I can say about the awesome feedback we got after the UXcamp Europe taking place a week ago.

To give you an idea:

@elreiss: “UXcamp Europe in Berlin was a SMASH success. Thanks to the fab organizers for making this happen. And keep it open and dynamic!”
http://twitpic.com/1sh7mw: “Ranjeet Kumar came from India to #uxce10 and says it was a best conference he ever attended (other were paid).”
Hilko Holweg (maczarr.de) “Das Camp zählt zu den besten, die ich bisher besucht habe.” [The Camp is among the best I ever attended.]

During the closing session on Sunday some were suggesting to have the UXcamp take place either twice a year or make it 4 days long. Well, this might be a little too much for us to organize, but maybe there are others out there who want to do a camp themselves. We’d love to support you in that, so please speak up!

One thing we should not forget is that we only set the infrastructure for the weekend, but the participants filled it with live. Therefore, we have to thank for 57 great sessions (Saturday and Sunday). You can find many of the presentations on slideshare, where we even were a featured event! Many people helped us at either serving coffee all the time or taking care of the cloakroom, which we couldn’t have done ourselves. So, a big THANK YOU to all the 400 people who came to Adlershof to share this weekend with us.

About a third, maybe even more people were traveling a long way since they are not living in Germany. Some were even coming from different continents! We are really happy that we were able to welcome you in Berlin. In my opinion it is quite exceptional that so many people traveled that far just for a BarCamp.

When meeting people after the camp a lot are asking me: “You are doing it next year as well, don’t you?” Well, we have not yet talked about that. It is quite time consuming to organize a BarCamp for 400 people. On the other hand, I have the impression that if we won’t do it again, people might get angry with us and stop talking to us. We’ll let you know…

Developing a collaborative modeling application

Sun, 06 Jun 2010 15:33:30 GMT

In this blog post I will show you a cool application that I have worked on outside Pidoco. Some of you might be familiar with using modeling tools. For example if you are a software developer, chances are you have to design architecture diagrams from time to time. Or if you are at a big company, you might have seen one of these complicated process models that explain how your business works. If that’s the case and you use this kind of software, the processWave.org Editor might make your work a lot faster and more convenient.

The processWave.org Editor is a fully collaborative modeling application that lets you create technical diagrams with several people at the same time. All changes that you or others make to the diagram are automatically synced between all participants in real-time – just as you know it from the Pidoco Prototype Creator. It is written as an extension to Google Wave, a powerful new collaboration platform from Google, that helps you create all sorts of documents and artifacts with multiple people very quickly. If you did not have the chance to give Wave a try yet, let me explain how it works: You start a new Wave, an artifact which is often described as “equal parts conversation and document”. You then invite the other people to that Wave to let them participate. And with a click on a toolbar button you add our editor to the document, and start modeling. A typical use case is shown in this video. The cool thing is that you can use Wave’s powerful conversation capabilities to discuss the model while you create it.

To try out the editor yourself, visit http://www.processwave.org – it is free and open source. We currently support modeling in different languages from the areas of software and process modeling, such as the Unified Modeling Language, Petri nets, Business Process Modeling Notation or Event-driven process chains. The work was done by my bachelor’s project team at Hasso Plattner Institute, the place where I study when I am not developing server components of pidoco’s Prototype Creator. Google actually liked our work so much that they invited us to demo it in a talk at Google’s biggest developer conference, Google I/O in San Francisco.

UXcamp Europe is on the finish line

Wed, 26 May 2010 16:48:14 GMT

It is just two days until our second UXcamp will take off with the warm up party. The badges are already printed and prepared, 11kg of coffee arrived last week, lanyards and t-shirts arrived today. We are just preparing the session grid and after having a look at the session proposals we hopefully have enough rooms for all the sessions. I can’t help it but I have the urgent feeling that we might have forgotten something. But I guess that is a necessary feeling two days before a big event!

Today we also signed the last sponsoring contract. We are very pleased with having so many sponsors supporting the UXcamp. Without them we would not be able to host such an event and make it free to the participants. Oh, and talking about participants: it was a pleasure to read all the countries on the badges where people are coming from. We have several attendees coming from overseas! In addition, we recognized some pidoco users on the participants list. It would be a pleasure to get to know you in person, so please approach us during the camp.

Hm, still thinking that I forgot something… Anyway, see you on Friday at Volksbar or Saturday morning.

The Pidoco Team Goes International

Tue, 13 Apr 2010 17:34:08 GMT

It’s no secret that globalization is upon us; and it’s also no secret that diversity adds to the culture, creativity, and competitiveness of globally operating businesses. We are happy to welcome two new members in our growing team who bring with them international experience and lots of fresh ideas: Carmen from the United States and Abba from Uganda have joined Pidoco’s marketing team and will be working together with the rest of the team to create educational and marketing materials. We wish both of them a great start at Pidoco: Welcome to our team!

Pidoco is committed to diversity. With our new team members we are proud to add yet two more countries to our “portfolio”, which by now includes Vietnam, France, Uganda, the U.S., and – you’ve guessed it: Germany. And we hope that we will continue to diversify our growing team in order to infuse our work atmosphere with new perspectives and unique ideas.

Prototyping and Project Management going hand in hand

Mon, 22 Mar 2010 22:34:37 GMT

When managing a software project, a lot of the time goes into specifying what the software should do and what it should look like. Once the specification is written it is transformed into many small tasks that have to be assigned to different people working on this project. Designers have to develop some shiny screens, developers have to write the code in behind, maybe the UI has to be localized into several languages, just to name some. However, we all know that there is no project where the specification doesn’t have to be adjusted to new requirements. At this point many project try to adapt some facets of Scrum or other iterative approaches to keep the project manageable.

To date, there are many different tools available that support the project manager in handling all this, one of them is plan.io. We at pidoco use plan.io for quite a while right now and are really happy with it. Since we also use pidoco to create wireframes that represent the major part of our specification, it would be nice to have some kind of integration between the two systems. Having the prototype in the plan.io wiki where you can write some explaining texts around, but at the same time being able to click through the prototype to feel the intended interactions, would be great. In addition, when people comment the prototype using our review feature, most of the times it results in new tasks that we have to do in the next iteration.

From now on this becomes reality. We have developed a small plan.io app that integrates pidoco prototypes with the wiki with one click. In addition, there is a list of all discussions to the prototype, where each of the discussions can be transformed into a new task. On top of that we put all the discussions into the plan.io activity stream, which you can grab the RSS feed and get regular updates of new comments to your prototype. In order to try our plan.io app you need to have both a pidoco and a plan.io account, which you can both test for free.

As already mentioned above, there are plenty of tools out there and you are probably using a different one. However, if you let us know which one, it should be easy to integrate pidoco with your tool as well. While developing the plan.io app we also started developing an API, which we plan to publish soon, for those who would like to write their own integration. More on this is coming soon.

Synchronous, Remote, Real-Time, Internet-based Usability Tests … what for? – Part 3 -

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 16:44:56 GMT

The previous week, I posted part Two of this article.

Tools Which Facilitate (partially) Synchronous Remote Usability Testing:

Here I will be listing some of the tools which in some way would aid in conducting Synchronous Remote Usability testing. Most of the tools will only fulfill some of the requirements listed previously or only implement partially the methodologies above.

Online Conferencing Systems:
These tools allow screen-sharing and remote control of mouse movements and the keyboard.

Although those tools allow you to observe and control tests sessions they come with a few flaws:

Test-users are required to install the client software on their own system
Firewalls may block the software (5% of test-users experience this problem)
Real-time amendments of the prototype is not possible
The moderator can’t use his machine for other tasks whilst conducting a test (making notes is not possible)
Latency problems
Test-user can not work on a familiar desktop environment

Screen Capture Software:
These programs allow virtual recording of the test-users screen. Test sessions can be recorded and stored but hardware configurations are often insufficient which leads to lagged test results.

Video Conferencing Tools:
Video conferencing tools (Skype, MSN Messenger etc.) allow the moderator and test-user to communicate via live audio&video feeds. The downside is that the client software needs to be installed on both system. Also specific testing of prototypes is not possible and would require additional software which use-up additional bandwidth and system memory.

Presentation Softwares:
MS PowerPoint is a great tool for static presentations, is however limited in it’s collaboration and sharing features.

Video Editing Tools:
You can also create video snippets of your presentations ( MS MovieMaker, Adobe Premiere etc.) but it is a lot of hassle and will surely put you off quickly.

Online Questionaires:
Online questionnaires created with Google Form or Surveymonkey are great applications for getting quantitative feedback on your product. It is however difficult to organize and match the feedback to the right user and test session.

Since this overview on incomplete tools for Synchronous Remote Usability Testing tools could go on forever, I do not wish to withhold the solution for you guys!
A little self-promotion will follow:

pidoco° Usability Suite:
The pidoco° usability suite is an online, web-based collaborative platform which allows to create, share and test prototypes in an instance. It is a tool which combines rapid prototyping of fully interactive prototypes and has powerful collaboration features:

Prototype Creator (creates realistic & fully functional prototypes via drag&drop)
Reviewer (allows asynchronous work-flow and feedback collection)
Remote Usability Tester (Synchronous Remote Usability Testing with screen-sharing, live audio-feed and mouse-tracking)

Conclusion:

It is possible to conduct user tests at an early stage. The aim for every company is to deliver their product on time and with the least hassle possible. Every year thousands of agencies spend a fortune on running all sorts of tests and still deliver products with flaws which need later amendments. The problem is that early-on, qualitative feedback is needed yet often not achieved due to budget limitations.

Technology allows us to connect to connect to people around the globe, so why not use this opportunity to run usability test session online. It will save us the cost of travel, give the test-user the comfort of staying in his home or at his workplace and create a greener world for all of us!

Product Release: Colors and Permalinks for your Prototype

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 11:28:50 GMT

This weekend we added two new features to the pidoco Prototype Creator: colors and permalinks. From now on you can choose the border and fill color for rectangles and ellipses to highlight certain areas of your prototype. We also added a semi transparent grey filling which you may use to create overlays and modal dialog boxes, similar to what you see on the screenshot.

For the second new feature we slightly modified the invitation dialog and added a new feature to the invite menu entry. In this new dialog you get three links, one points to a png image, one to the sketched html, and the third to the plain html version of your prototype. You can choose the page they will point to and copy paste the link into your wiki or send these links via chat to your colleagues.

UXcamp Europe opens tickets next Wednesday

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 21:30:38 GMT

The first European UXcamp will open the ticket lists on next Wednesday, 3rd of March. Be prepared to register and grab your ticket since we expect the tickets to be gone rather soon. However, there will be two separate lists, one for all Germans and one for our international guests, so there should be enough tickets for all foreigners. If you need some advice for booking your trip, please don’t hesitate to ask us.

To all of you who plan to give a presentation or workshop, please have a look at our Session Forum and add a note on what you want to talk about. We hope to see some very exciting sessions!

New Product Release: Custom Stencils and Dollar Payment

Tue, 26 Jan 2010 10:26:50 GMT

This weekend, we added some new things to pidoco. First, you can now pay in dollar directly with a fixed price. Since many of our test users live in the USA, we thought this might support you. There are no more exchange rates to consider or some special fees from your bank for paying in Euros. Prices start from $9 per month and user. You may want to have a look at the complete pricing list. The free trial remains with 31 days which you can use to extensively test pidoco.

The second thing we added are custom stencils that you can create. We thought the most likely case is that you want to have elements in your own style. Therefore, all images that you upload or add via URL are automatically added to the stencil palette. From there you can use them just like you use the other stencils: simply drag them onto a page. That not enough, we made all images linkable. You can set a target just as you do for a button or a link. This way, you may create and use your very own buttons in a pidoco prototype. Since some pictures may be rather small, you can give them a name that is visible in the palette to distinguish similar looking images.

This is only the first step in adding custom stencils to your prototype. What would you like to be able to do regarding custom stencils? Let us know, either by leaving a comment in here or by adding your idea to our feedback forum.

Product Release: Remote Usability Tests and Specification Document

Tue, 05 Jan 2010 20:06:48 GMT

To start a great new year we have rolled out a brand new product which nicely integrates with the Pidoco Prototype Creator: the Remote Usability Tester.

Take one of your prototypes and do a Usability Test with zero set up time. You start a test session by simply inviting anybody via an eMail just as you would do for letting them view or discuss your prototype. There is nothing more to do for technically preparing a test session. You meet your test participant online within pidoco and can watch exactly what he or she is doing with your prototype. Via either a typical phone or our integrated Flash phone you can talk to each other to apply proven Usability Methods like “Think Aloud Testing”, but this time online from wherever you are. During the whole test session, everything is recorded automatically for playback. Take your time and replay the session as many times as you need to analyze what your test participant did and said.

Using the Prototype Creator and the Remote Usability Tester at the same time, you can test small modifications to your prototype with a test participant watching you. This gives you the unique possibility to apply Usability Methods like “A/B Tests” or “Wizard of Oz Testing”. Prototyping and Usability Testing can go hand in hand for the very first time!

Read what others say about our Remote Usability Tester.

This not being enough, we also added a long requested export to Microsoft Word or OpenOffice.org. With just one click you can add text notes to every element to specify and describe your prototype in great detail. All these notes are rendered into one document together with images of the Use Cases, Pages, and Layers of the prototype. All your discussions will be added to the document as well in order to keep track how design decisions evolved over time. Every single piece that is not visible on the pages is described in more detail, like link targets or menu structures. Special Highlight Images show the building blocks of your prototype. You can download a sample document of our homepage prototype.

Take the exported document as is or use it as a resource to write your very own specification document. We know it is a quite difficult task to create a document that satisfies everybody’s requirements. With this style of document we hope to support all of our users in the best possible way. However, please don’t hesitate to approach us with recommendations and ideas of how we can improve the word export.

Starting today, the word export is included for free to all our users. In case you don’t have an account yet, register for a free test account now.

The pidoco˚xmas hour!

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 16:53:11 GMT

Dear All,

we here at pidoco˚ love xmas and this is why we have a very special offer for you:

When you place an order for any of our plans, before Dec. 25th we double your uptime!!

Buy one month, get one free – buy 6 months, get 6 months for free!!

No matter how long you book in advance, we will double your booking period without any additional cost!

Simply click on the Santa on your right or go to: https://pidoco.com/en/xmas2009-en and sign-up for this amazing xmas deal!! Hurry!

Technorati Claim Token

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 11:27:11 GMT

This is not an actual post. This is only to verify our claim token with Technorati so you can find us there too!

And the Token is: U97XBUT3RBSX

New payment option: monthly payments without automatic renewal!

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 11:04:29 GMT

Dear pidoco° users,

we have included a new payment option for you.
If you need pidoco° for a specific project which lasts for a fixed period (e.g. 2 months), you can now pay for that exact period and not have to worry about cancelling your subscription.
Simply pay for your desired time (starting from 1 month) and use pidoco° without worrying about cancellation periods.
Simple, effective and tailored to your specific needs!

Your pidoco° team

pidoco° updates: Live Chat, Annotations, Timeline and Some Bug Fixes

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 13:17:19 GMT

Dear everyone,

we usually work double shifts to make your pidoco° experience even better. Now, we are proud to present you with a few additional features and bug fixes! In order make make your prototyping & usability testing even better, we have included some features which should aid the overall communication with your co-workers.

From now on, when opening the Remote Usability Tester, you will be able to re-play, fast forward and skip through the test session via the new timeline function.

It also includes the new annotations feature which can be used for making notes on-the-fly whilst conduction a Remote Usability Test. This way, it will be easy to jump back to the exact point in time where your test user experienced certain difficulties or where you think that specific changes are needed. Simply re-play your test session at a later point and jump straight to the annotations in the timeline -easy, quick and convenient!

pidoco° timeline function

You probably are know that the Remote Usability Tester is based on a live on-to-one telephone module which gives you the option to either use a normal land line telephone or the integrated FLASH module. Well, we have had several petitions and now we decided to include a real-time chat module. This way, you can run a usability test even if you do not have a telephone or microphone at your disposal.

real-time chat

Since we’re already talking about chatting:
in case that you are in need of further guidance, have some questions or if you simply are in need of human contact – why not chat directly with us? You now can make use of our integrated pidoco° chat where you can get in contact with us without needing to send out lengthy emails nor having to listen to our charming German accents over the phone!

chat with pidoco°

Last but not least we have dome some extensive bug fixing and you should notice a definite increase in performance when using the Prototype Creator.

We sincerely hope that you can enjoy the new features and the increase in performance and hope that your work-flow will be even better.

Your pidoco° Team