We are being limited by the names we give to specific objects and tools. We are being limited by our habits. We are being limited by habits of other people. And we are being limited by our own usual ways of using certain tools.

For example: what you can do with a hammer? First thing that comes to mind: hit the nails with it of course! What a stupid question?! But as you keep thinking you can find different ways of using a hammer. You can hit nails with it but you can take them out of wooden boards as well. Or you can kill someone with this tool. Everything depends on current needs.

I know that you may be thinking  prototyping / wireframing tool  is only for wireframing or prototyping. Period. Today I want to show you a little alternative way of using JustProto. How? See below.

Product Retrospect.

Product Retrospect is a simple yet effective way of summary after the project’s closed. You gather the whole team and discuss every pro and con that’s project related. You don’t point fingers saying “You screwed this up by not talking to me earlier” but say “This was badly executed due to lack of communication”. Sometimes when your team is spread all over the world it’s extremely difficult to do this kind of project retrospective – time difference and gathering everyone on the same page is hard. JustProto’s collaborative features come in handy in this time of need:

• Multiple Collaborators,
• Real-Time Collaboration,
• Chat,
• Project Preview with just One Link,
• Live Preview.

How it works?

Each JustProto account have an Administrator/Owner, who can grant access to others – The Collaborators. Each Collaborator gets his unique login and password to login to the project at a certain time. Using nothing else but computer with Internet access everyone edit the same project at the same time and everyone see all changes in the real time (that’s the Real-Time Collaboration).Kinda like on Google Docs while editing the same spreadsheet or word document.

Each person choses note, tag or pin color they like and that’s that – by editing its text Collaborators – The Team add their point of view on a closed project. What is important – everyone can talk on a project Chat. Smart history will save all the conversations. This way everyone’s up to date even if the Internet connection dies: Chat history and current version of the retrospective is saved and always available online.

This is en example of project retrospective in JustProto

  This is another example of project retrospective in JustProto

Any person who is not on the project team but gets the Preview Link will see the retrospective project. Let’s say your boss is not one of your project team but you’d like him to know the results of the retrospective – send him a Preview Link and that’s that!

What’s even more fun and handy and cool – if a person who get the Preview Link will open it while you and your team edit the notes, they will see everything in the real time too thanks to Realtime Preview! How the project retrospective can all look like? See here.

This example shows that you don’t ALWAYS need to stick to the tool’s purpose. Don’t be limited, try thinking of other ways you can use the tools you like : ) What it also shows is the fact that wireframing tool can be helpful not only while design happen – it can also become pretty useful after the project is done. Remember that the tool is just a hammer. You don’t need to see nails everywhere.

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

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 an working app is sooooo complex and difficult that it’s not the piece of cake that clients think it is up front.  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.

JustProto (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 JustProto 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 JustProto 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 JustProto’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 JustProto 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 JustProto Helped SocialPaths)
In our team, JustProto 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, JustProto is the link between clients and our team. After three months of using JustProto 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 JustProto helps your!

“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 noone can say “nobody has it”
We took Mark’s suggestion under consideration and now it’s possible to set individual height and width for 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 beeing 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!

Sharing ideas in the real time, faster and better team communication, ability to go back and see conversations history… these are just a few things you get thanks to new JustProto feature – chat!

Each and every collaborator signed to the project gets the view of the history. You won’t have to go over your ideas and conversations with every single person on your team. Chat is great when your team members live in different cities, countries or continent – just log in to JustProto account and chat! No other web communicators needed!

Take a look at this short presentation of chatl. Wanna see it working? Go to JustProto and see for yourself!

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 chane to follow older conversations to check what’s going on with the project. Pretty cool, isn’t it?

Here’s dooshek talking about our new upcoming feature…

Prototype your world using JustProto!