It is not an easy task for designers and creators to clearly communicate their ideas to clients or their development team and this is where there is a strong need for a great prototype tool to convert imagination to reality. Korean startup Studio XID has created a highly efficient prototype tool – Protopie. Since its launch in 2014, the tool has been endorsed and utilised by designers from many high-profile firms like Google, Microsoft, Nintendo, Alibaba, etc.
Ideate, develop and share with just a few clicks
ProtoPie allows designers to easily build sensor-aided prototypes for mobile apps without using coding. ProtoPie works on both Mac and Windows focussing on creating prototypes for mobile apps. It is very useful for UX designers and Interaction designers to build advanced, highly interactive prototypes easily. The designer can import designs from tools like Sketch and Adobe XD CC seamlessly to ProtoPie and can ensure a smooth prototyping process.
The designer can easily share ideas and design prototypes using ProtoPie Player (available on iOS and Android) or ProtoPie Cloud and get quicker feedback. This helps in decreasing the time to create the product and enables the designer to fulfil the client’s needs.
The tool also helps the designer to save their designs on their devices. Designers can reuse their ideas by transferring their static design into the interactive prototype with just a few clicks. The tool allows smart device sensors in prototypes. A designer working in ProtoPie can use 3D touch, compass sensor, tilt sensor, sound sensor to build prototypes.
Becoming an essential tool for designers
“ProtoPie enables designers to build prototypes for the entire spectrum of digital products, in the easiest way possible without code. This way, we would like to bridge the gap between designers and developers as well as software and hardware,” the startup’s CEO Tony Kim told the media. For its ease of use and innovative user interface, ProtoPie was awarded the Red Dot Award in 2017 for Interface Design.
ProtoPie is available with a one-year subscription method. There is a free trial version available as well. When a user buys ProtoPie they can use it for a lifetime, except that the cloud sharing and updates are only available with a subscription.
Studio XID was founded by Tony Kim, a former interaction designer with Google, Scotty Kim, a former software engineer with Samsung and John Song, a former Naver software engineer. The company raised US $3.5 million in a Series A round of funding in July 2018. The investment was led by Korea Investment Partners along with from Kolon Investment and POSCO Venture Capital.
The startup had got its US $1 million in 2017 from Evergreen Venture Partners, Line Plus and Samsung Venture Investment. The firm intends to utilise its funding for product development and overseas expansion. High-fidelity prototyping is an essential tool for interaction designers and tools like ProtoPie are becoming part of the daily toolset.
