“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!

What’s In It For Me?

You don’t have to remember to make a payment – The System Does It For You So You Will Have An Uninterrupted Access To Your JustProto Account! Pretty Neat, Right? : )

What Kind Of Credit Cards Do You Accept?

• Visa
• Mastercard
• Maestro

How Can I Use This New Fantastic Option? : )

It’s easy!  Pick the Credit Card option first and than tick the Bill my card automatically check box – see the picture below.

Can I Resign If I Won’t Like It?

No Problem! You Can Resign Any Time You Want Changing Your Account Settings. : )

Login To Your Account To See This New Method In Action!

Check new feature at work yourself here. Have fun!

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 apples 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 click before changing 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.

“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!