Customer Spotlight7 min read

How Picsart Speeds Up Their User Testing

Why ProtoPie is the best rapid high-fidelity prototyping tool for UX designers.

Iulia Sorodoc
Iulia Sorodoc, Product Marketing ManagerNovember 9, 2022
protopie webinar with picsart

Let’s bust a myth: making a prototype slows down the product design process.

That might be true of lo-fi prototyping, or indeed high-fidelity prototyping—but not rapid high-fidelity prototyping tools.

ProtoPie is an entirely code-free rapid high-fidelity prototyping tool that leaves no room for error and speeds up the product design process, boosting communication between the designer and stakeholders, and amping up creativity.

The product design team at Picsart discovered ProtoPie’s amazing power when testing a new feature.

In our latest webinar, we met two of Picsart’s product designers, Lilit Mkrtchyan and Roupen Babian.

Webinar guest speakers Lilit Mkrtchyan and Roupen Babian.
Webinar guest speakers Lilit Mkrtchyan and Roupen Babian.

They wanted to speed up their product design process and test a workable prototype that looked and felt like the real thing.

They told us why they chose ProtoPie to fulfill their needs. You can find the video below.

Why Picsart turned to ProtoPie

Picsart is a Florida-based all-in-one creative platform of video, photo and design tools that enable users to share their work on social media.

The design team needed to test a new feature, which they had designed as a basic prototype with other prototyping tools—an interactive color wheel that showed the entire color spectrum and allowed the user to choose a color based on hue and shade.

Interactive color slider prototype made with ProtoPie.
Interactive color slider prototype made with ProtoPie.

The team used other tools to work on a number of basic prototypes. Only, there was a problem—they needed to conduct user testing and wanted to provide the user with the same experience as had they been using the real product.

They could have built a fully-developed prototype to test it, but that would have taken too much time. Other prototyping tools were considered, but they were limited in scope.

So, they turned to ProtoPie.

“ProtoPie’s flexibility and visibility enabled smooth interactions and complex flows that looked and felt like real experiences,” said Roupen. “It gives you such detailed control of interactions and the links between components.”

They were able to import the simple designs they had made on Figma into ProtoPie and make more complex adjustments using ProtoPie.

The ability to prototype complex interactions is one of the many reasons designers at Picsart love ProtoPie.
The ability to prototype complex interactions is one of the many reasons designers at Picsart love ProtoPie.

How ProtoPie turbocharged user-testing

“Designers often face limitations in variables with other prototyping tools,” said Roupen. “You have to tell the platform what will happen with every click.”

This wasn’t the case with ProtoPie.

They simply reused their Picsart color sliders in ProtoPie by dragging the pre-made component onto the ProtoPie screen. The only thing left to do was to link the components together and get started.

Reusing Picsart components is as simple as dragging and dropping them onto ProtoPie Studio.
Existing color sliders can be reused by simply dragging the pre-made component onto the ProtoPie Studio screen.

ProtoPie enabled them to link the components together so that the color spectrum changed with the control of the slider. In short, every component on the screen became the component itself.

The designers didn’t have to make a series of intricately detailed commands on the platform, telling it that by moving the color slider a new color will be created. Simply, the interaction on the color slider on the color wheel caused the transfer of a color from the background.

“This is almost impossible with any other prototyping tool”, said Roupen.

Redesigning the Color Picker project in ProtoPie Studio.
Redesigning the Color Picker project in ProtoPie Studio.

How ProtoPie simplifies the handoff process

ProtoPie doesn’t just speed up user testing—it turbocharges and simplifies the handoff process between the design team and tech team. ProtoPie’s Interaction Recordings feature serves as guidelines for engineers when putting the interactions in the prototype into actual production.

“ProtoPie boosts the communication between designers and stakeholders, developers, and clients,” said Lilit. “You can get constructive feedback when you actually show the prototype.”

High-fidelity prototyping tools are great for enabling product design teams to create prototypes that look and feel like the real thing.

However, as interactions grow in complexity, the greater the complexity of the handoff. Tech teams are faced with second-guessing the thoughts and feelings of UX designers. Designers often find themselves in a never-ending back-and-forth with teams of confused and struggling engineers.

ProtoPie’s developer handoff process is much simpler.

A step-by-step guide to ProtoPie’s recipe for success

Simply hit ‘record’ and sit back and watch as every interaction and animation is recorded in full down to the smallest detail.

The Interaction Recordings is an amazing time-saving feature in ProtoPie, the digital design equivalent of a classical composer transcribing every tiny detail in the flow of your prototype.

Upon receiving the prototype, the developer simply presses ‘Play’ and watches every interaction on the screen: the mouse moving, the scaling up of the size, the curve, animation, duration, and the interaction of which layer.

The notation of every tiny detail is shown on the right-hand panel. Engineers don’t have to second-guess your intentions: they can see it all live. “This boosts your creativity,” said Lilit. “It makes your prototype tangible.”

With ProtoPie's Interaction Recordings feature developer handoff becomes easy.
Eliminate all second guessing with ProtoPie’s Interaction Recordings feature.

The learning curve is easy with ProtoPie

The learning curve is often the main challenge for high-fidelity prototyping tools.

“I have good news for designers,” said Roupen. “ProtoPie’s UI interface and overarching logic are similar to other design tools like Figma. Even Photoshop.”

ProtoPie is also replete with educational information. There’s the ProtoPie Community, an online ecosystem where fellow designers can share tips, solve problems and share their amazingly innovative prototypes and get feedback. Lilit found the YouTube tutorials helpful. Roupen was more drawn to the articles.

“I learned from scratch using the articles on the website,” said Roupen. “The articles are really detailed and well-presented and provide great examples.”

The ProtoPie School and videos make learning ProtoPie easy. The Tips & Tricks category in the blog section provides a treasure trove of detail—from using complex interactions to creating triggers or prototyping a complete flow.

Start your prototyping journey with ProtoPie School.
Start your prototyping journey with ProtoPie School.

The creative horizon is endless with ProtoPie

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