Interface Design Software for Digital Paper Prototyping

When you are into interface design, Rapid Paper Prototyping is an old hat! But ever considered doing interface design on screen?

With pidoco’s web-based screen design software, interaction designers and screen developers can save valuable time, optimize communication within the team and build better interfaces for the internet.

Rapid Paper Prototyping has already been established as THE way to get a GUI started. Rapid Paper Prototyping is about sketching ideas with pen an paper to be shared and iterated within the team. This concept will then go through an ongoing, sometimes collaborative, design process by implementing feedback from different stake holders. This paper-built prototype will finally act as a roadmap for the whole project – from beginning to the end (but is there a real end?). Some screen-designers even use these basic sketches for running usability tests. Revealing usability issues before programming can save a lot of money, since later alterations in the so called ‘finished’ web app are minimized.

However, there are problems with Rapid Paper Prototyping.  Sketches on paper are only scanned to add to the project documentation and also difficult to collaborate on in larger teams. Transforming paper sketches into interactive, digital documents for getting the grip on how workflows are reproduced in the design is also a time consuming task as we all know!
That is why many companies create their wireframes directly in MS PowerPoint or InDesign and have them send to the relevant sources. True, that way one can share the data more effectively but it is not really more interactive than making copies of a piece of paper handing it to the team. The Visio-type static wireframes still do not show the real functionality:  links, dynamic menus and combo-boxes etc. cannot be reproduced effectively and need to be explained individually in long paragraphs. Again, more time and effort has to be invested to get the message across.

pidoco° has noticed this problem and made it their duty to tackle it by providing a fast web-based interface design software.