 is a workplace mental well-being platform based in Aotearoa, New Zealand. Its mission is to improve the well-being of 100 million people and “save 100,000 lives”.

Groov is a unique ProtoPie case study—after the product design stage, the products are sent to a team of in-house clinicians who rigorously test them to ensure that everything is based on sound scientific evidence. Naturally, they require a rapid prototyping tool that can quickly create high definition, realistic prototypes.

We caught up with Maya McNicoll, the Senior UX Designer at Groov, to find out more about how Groov uses ProtoPie to create safe-to-use mental well-being platforms. 

Groov designs tools that help people feel better. We comprise a team of 50 people based across New Zealand, Australia and the US.

, which is used for daily, personalized well-being and inspiration, and 

, for interactive online learning. There’s also a 

, which we use to measure well-being insights, and a 

—for helping workplaces introduce positive well-being habits.

Our team encompasses a wide range of disciplines. There are in-house UX designers and content creators, marketing experts and product managers. Critically, we also have an in-house clinical team who ensures that everything we release is clinically sound and evidence-based.

I work on the Groov app. On any given day, I might be focusing on prototyping, user flows, discovery research, user testing, or working on our own product design system.

While the role is challenging, the hard work is made worthwhile by the fact that I’m improving the lives of people in a meaningful way. I can’t emphasize enough how fulfilling it is—particularly when I hear from those whose lives have immeasurably improved as a result of Groov.

Being a mental well-being platform, the single most important thing for Groov is that our products are safe for people to use. We have zero-tolerance for risk. This adds a whole new layer to usability testing.

We encountered a problem. New features that tested well after the UX design stage were being rejected by our team of in-house clinicians, making the whole process longer and more arduous.

However, it wasn’t ethical for the clinicians to sign off on static user flows. In short, we needed a high-fidelity rapid prototyping tool—one that would allow us to speedily create realistic prototypes that the clinical team could test as though they were using the real thing. 

"We needed ProtoPie—we just didn’t know it yet."

Then the pandemic hit. The New Zealand Ministry of Health approached us, asking if we could release our app for free to everyone in Aotearoa—to help them alleviate the increased mental suffering brought on by government-imposed lockdowns.

They wanted to see some demos—we needed to create a high-fidelity product design quickly and affordably, testing ideas that would normally require a whole development team.

How ProtoPie helped Groov achieve its objectives

The Ministry of Health loved the prototype and agreed to support a free public version of the app.

That’s where ProtoPie has solved most of our problems—user testing. Stakeholders will be thoroughly convinced of your product’s merit upon seeing a user genuinely enjoying your prototype.

It was so successful that the partnership was renewed in March 2022, and now everyone in New Zealand has a free-to-use Groov app at their fingertips. However, we’re still selling our original version to businesses across New Zealand, Australia, and beyond.

The next big hurdle was engagement—how could we create an app that was safe, accessible, effective and fun to use? ProtoPie proved to be the game-changer. As soon as we have an idea, our UX designers can create mock-up prototypes quickly, complete with complex interaction designs. 

So, when fellow UX designers ask me, “Is ProtoPie good value for money?” I always point out that as a rapid prototyping tool, ProtoPie is second to none: time is money, and we’ve cut our iteration time in half.

While it’s also fun and intuitive, once you get the hang of it there is so much wiggle room to grow. The 

 feature is popular among the UX design team, but for me, it’s not just about the tool—it’s the support that comes with it. Whether it’s the 

—a feature that allows users to upvote proposed new features—I just love being part of the 

More than 15,000 companies trust ProtoPie to achieve their prototyping goals. Discover what ProtoPie can do for you and your team today.

Learn why ProtoPie became a game-changer for the Groov Team and their user testing process.

ProtoPie, The Prototyping Tool That Fits Right In The Sweet Spot Of Usable And Powerful.

 is a global digital agency and innovation consultancy that operates at the intersection between technology, data, and creativity. It helps some of the world’s leading companies strengthen their brand and grow their customer base through digital product design, including Google, Nike, Verizon, Samsung, and Toyota.

However, they can only do this through rigorous UX prototyping and by conducting extensive user research. We caught up with Anthony Baker, Vice President, Head of Technology Strategy at R/GA, to learn more about how they use 

 for their rapid prototyping needs and to generally speed up their design workflows.

Every digital agency knows there’s a huge difference between concepts, decks, and static representations of an experience versus what the real thing will actually be like. We might have several meetings with a client and present a solid vision of what we’ll produce, but even then, nobody knows exactly how it will turn out.

Well, not until you begin UX prototyping.

We leverage prototyping for bringing concepts to life, for user testing, and for market-fitting research. It helps to accelerate the implementation of creative and technical solutions. 

At R/GA we’re constantly experimenting, using the latest, most innovative digital product design tools to push the boundaries of creativity. Our team is full of amazing ideas—but even the best ideas need to be validated, polished, and tweaked. We rely on UX prototyping to help us do this.

In today’s business landscape, speed is of the essence. Companies need to react quickly according to how consumers think and behave, which is constantly changing. Digital prototyping is therefore crucial for all companies.

By creating high-fidelity prototypes at an early stage, you can then begin iterating and fine-tuning your concepts. This is a real competitive advantage. The quicker you can bring your ideas and concepts into life, the more opportunities you can generate for your clients.

How ProtoPie helps R/GA solve its digital prototyping challenges

ProtoPie’s rapid prototyping capabilities help us close the communication gap between what a client expects and what we want to deliver. Our team can prototype realistic experiences at speed, gain feedback from the client and customers at an early stage, and iterate on an ongoing basis.

This makes the creative process as efficient as possible. We can identify if our approach will work, and if not, course-correct as soon as possible. ProtoPie has saved us a ton of time and wasted effort over the years—we can make sure we’re always on the same page as our clients throughout the design process.

"ProtoPie offers the best of both worlds—it’s straightforward to use yet offers a wide variety of rapid prototyping features. We’d never consider using another prototyping tool." 

We were immediately impressed by how intuitive ProtoPie is. The tool’s underlying architecture (with objects, 

) just made sense. It felt natural to use, which meant our team easily got to grips with how it worked. There’s no point in implementing a tool that nobody understands how to use.

Discover endless prototyping possibilities with ProtoPie

More than 15,000 companies trust ProtoPie to achieve their prototyping goals. If you want to see what sort of impact ProtoPie could have on your organization, sign up for a 30-day free trial today.

Anthony Baker, Vice President, Head of Technology Strategy, APAC, explains how ProtoPie speeds up R/GA’s process from bringing creative concepts to life, all the way to conducting user testing.

How ProtoPie Accelerates R/GA’s Digital Product Design Workflow

It’s always inspiring to hear about how designers use ProtoPie to make the most realistic interface design animations and create highly interactive prototypes. But Project MARCH is perhaps the most inspiring use case of them all.

This non-profit team of students is driven by a powerful mission: to use robotic exoskeleton technology to improve the quality of life for people with spinal cord injuries. The project requires complete dedication and solid design collaboration. Students set aside their studies for a year, committing themselves fully to the process of developing a functional, user-friendly robotic exoskeleton.

Project MARCH uses ProtoPie’s free student license, our 

, to help them with their work. We’re thrilled to see that students are using our free license not only for their own benefit but for the benefit of others too. If you want to find out more information about Project MARCH, 

We caught up with Art van Zuuk, Design Engineer at Project MARCH, to find out more about their project—and to learn how they benefited from one of ProtoPie’s strongest features - software and hardware connection. 

Project MARCH is a team of 26 students who come from a wide variety of backgrounds. Our goal is to create an exoskeleton for paraplegics—in other words, to make robotic legs for people that can no longer move their own legs.

Our team is split up into a range of disciplines. There are some of us who work on creating the motors, others focus on writing the software, and so on.

I’m a Design Engineer, which means that I’m primarily responsible for designing the covers and the input device for this year’s exoskeleton. But there’s also a healthy amount of flexibility. While these are my main two areas of focus, every team member also has the freedom to focus on whatever else they’d like to accomplish (well, as long as it contributes to the overall project).

This year, we wanted to completely change the design of the input device. Rather than using a tiny microcontroller with a small display, we'll instead be using a smartphone connected to an Arduino device that registers input signals from a rotary encoder.

However, we weren’t sure if this idea would work—so we wanted to make a quick prototype to test out our assumptions.

ProtoPie provided us with two key benefits. First, we could create our prototype quickly. Second, and most importantly, it would be realistic—it could simulate all the functions of the end-product. This meant that we could actually test out our prototype on someone with a spinal cord injury to confirm that it would work as intended.

The idea kind of came out of nowhere. The team was brainstorming and we came to a fairly obvious realization: smartphones are becoming increasingly versatile. Nowadays, everyone walks around with their own tiny (yet incredibly powerful) computer in their pockets. These smartphones contain a ton of sensors and actuators, so they’re perfect to use as input devices.

Once we recognized this, we knew that we could use smartphones to dramatically improve the user experience for people that walk in exoskeletons.

Before using ProtoPie, we’d previously programmed an app on a Raspberry Pi using Python. But while this worked out in some ways, it was pretty hard to change up the design of the interface—so we knew the solution was far from perfect.

 about connecting Arduino with ProtoPie Connect.

How ProtoPie helped Project MARCH accomplish its objectives

We were lucky enough to use the free education version of ProtoPie (as we’re all students) for this Arduino project. Since the input device needed to have physical buttons, we used an 

 Pro Micro—which can simulate a keyboard—to connect a rotary encoder to the phone. Once we had an On The Go (OTG) connection to the phone, we could then translate keyboard stroke inputs to outputs on the ProtoPie application.

The ProtoPie app gave us key insights into how our whole system operated. By creating a pilot and testing out our assumptions, we could proceed with confidence. We didn’t have to simply hope that our exoskeleton would operate as intended. Instead, we made sure that our vision actually worked before we began the end-to-end design process.

ProtoPie’s very quick to set up and easy to understand, but at the same time, it’s incredibly versatile. The application is well built and well designed, which makes it very intuitive. It was a seamless experience that delivered exactly what we needed. There aren’t many tools that you can say that about.

 why ProtoPie is the best prototyping tool for you.

More than 15,000 companies trust ProtoPie to achieve their prototyping goals. Schedule a demo to discover ways 

Meet the Project MARCH team and learn how they use ProtoPie its software and hardware connection capability to build robotic legs.

How Project MARCH Uses ProtoPie To Build Robotic Exoskeletons

Here at ProtoPie, we love checking in with our customers. Not only do we gain valuable feedback that helps us improve our own solutions, but we also get to hear directly from some of the most innovative, forward-thinking UX designers (or agencies) in the world.

, one of the leading UX design agencies in Germany, based in Saarbrücken.

Centigrade has a pretty amazing roster of clients—but one in particular stands out. Centigrade recently teamed up with 

, an innovative car startup, to prototype and engineer an advanced automotive software stack and showcar.

We spoke with Marius Hubertus, senior visual designer at Centigrade, to learn more about how he used ProtoPie and its real-time data functionality to achieve ELEXIR’s innovative vision.

Personally, I come from a fairly multi-disciplinary background, having worked in visual design, 3D, and motion design. I’m currently a senior visual designer at Centigrade, a German UX agency that serves startups, established medium-sized businesses, and global enterprises across a wide range of business areas.

We’ve got a pretty multidisciplinary team here at Centigrade that includes computer scientists, designers, game developers, user researchers and psychologists. This helps us deliver unique user experiences that leverage the latest technological innovations, design best practices, and psychological insights. We try to blend together the best approaches in each of these fields. Bluntly spoken, our mission is to create jaw-dropping user experiences throughout the whole digital product life cycle.

Earlier this year, ELEXIR—a startup of self-confessed “car geeks”—came to us with a vision. They wanted to create a sustainable car that could be completely personalizable, allowing each user to configure it according to their precise individual requirements or preferences.

They’d already created the underlying software architecture and realtime OS that would allow users to do this. Interestingly, they used an open-source approach, meaning anybody can contribute to its system. Customers can literally add, modify, or replace hardware elements themselves, while automatically benefitting from any further software improvements that the ELEXIR team makes.

As soon as I heard their idea, I was hooked. They’d already established their software architecture and had complete control over all of the car’s hardware aspects. However, they needed to create a new human-machine interface (HMI) from scratch. They could only convince stakeholders that they had built something valuable by creating a visual representation of their innovative software and hardware.

Given the project’s emphasis on hardware integration and personalization, we knew that we needed an advanced design software—one that went far beyond the limits of static screens. We basically wanted to create a highly sophisticated, highly dynamic prototype, one that would give users a good impression of our ideas, allow us to iterate quickly, and come up with a solution in an extremely short timeframe.

Having worked with ProtoPie before, we knew this was without doubt the best tool for the job.

We needed real-time data connection across multiple hardware devices and screens as we wanted the user interactions on the HMI panel to have real physical effects right inside the showcar—this was exactly what ProtoPie offered. Plus, we were also on an incredibly tight deadline. We wanted to move quickly as individuals but still be able to collaborate seamlessly. With ProtoPie, me and my teammates could all get to work separately (for instance, by creating components) before putting everything together at the final stage.

It was the perfect blend. We could let me and the other Centigrade UX designers to focus on achieving our specific deliverables, safe in the knowledge that everything would fit together nicely at the end.

We didn’t want to reinvent the wheel (apologies for the cheesy pun!) or to overwhelm the user. We therefore used familiar interaction mechanisms and only displayed the necessary information for each use case, which gave our prototype a lean, minimalistic feel. However, that’s not to say that it was simple or basic in a hedonistic sense—we used 3D visualizations for user guidance and increased joy of use, for example.

We were also really excited about using visual representations of real-life objects to help users control a wide range of functions. If they wanted to change their seat position, they could do so on-screen, but they’d feel the seat actually move underneath them. How cool is that?

There was a bit of a balancing act here. When thinking about modern car companies, you automatically think about scale and mass production. But despite this, we tried to stay as lean as possible during the design process.

We followed a continuous, incremental approach when introducing new components to our library. By making them extensible and reusable, we knew they could be adapted to a wide range of use cases. We therefore took the atomic approach, building small components which would then eventually be nested inside bigger organisms, however, without producing any visual design cracks.

To ensure maintainability, we used multiple files for each of the software’s different parts and output devices. Each of these files was linked up to an overarching global library that contained all of these components. Instead of spending days on designing static screen designs, we defined a visual design system language together with ELEXIR, set up a couple of basic components to test it out, and moved directly into working in ProtoPie.

From this point onwards, our workflow was divided into three main phases of development:

Connection with real-time data by using the OBD port

Integrating, testing, and iterating on the real product

How ProtoPie helped Centigrade create ELEXIR’s vision

Prototyping has always been a crucial part of my workflow. It helps me to visualize, test, and iterate ideas quickly without wasting too much time. It acts as a safety net, allowing me to verify whether my ideas will actually work before we begin the implementation process.

Throughout the years, I have tested and used a wide range of tools, often resulting in frustration due to technical limitations or a lack of functionality. But ProtoPie was different. Its advanced component features allow me to go beyond merely transitioning between static screens. Literally anything can be animated.

ProtoPie gives me a level of flexibility that I’ve yet to experience with any other tool. I can build UI components in isolation but store them in a dedicated component library, a single source of truth, which allows me to communicate between each of my different components.

Last but not least, being able to test everything directly on the final product (using the real showcar hardware) was an absolute game-changer for us.

Marius’s top tips for making the most out of ProtoPie

We wanted to showcase a 3D representation of the car and its components for the navigation system, as well as for the settings. Using videos or static images wouldn’t have been sufficient—we needed a lot more flexibility to achieve what we were looking for.

While there’s currently no way to integrate 3D data into ProtoPie, I did a little research and found out how to do this using the tool’s existing variables and functions (thanks, Khonok Lee!). ProtoPie’s got such a strong community of great designers that if you ever run into a problem, you’ll nearly always find a solution somewhere out there on the internet.

It’s also worth pointing out that things can get pretty messy pretty quickly in ProtoPie when you’ve got a ton of different chains, if-conditions, send/response functions, Lottie integrations, and more. I strongly recommend that designers name all of their layers and split structure designs into components. When working on massive projects like this, you can quickly lose things in the sauce—so it pays dividends to be organized and have everything neatly stored away.

Lastly, I have two tiny performance-related recommendations (but don’t worry, ProtoPie’s performance is usually great!):

Don’t integrate images in a larger resolution than they will be displayed.

Try to use scalable vector graphics (SVGs) as much as possible and Lottie files instead of videos.

Aside from these two points, you have nothing else to worry about. We love using ProtoPie here at Centigrade—and we strongly recommend it to all other designers/agencies out there. Also we are massively proud that our UX design has been acknowledged by professional juries, which is why we are nominated for the 

How ELEXIR and Centigrade use ProtoPie to push the boundaries of automotive innovation.

Creating the Car of the Future With ProtoPie

In today’s digital-first world, a designer's choice of tools plays a key role in both their workflow and creativity. Today we speak with Ashton Snook, Head of Product Design & UX Research, and Daniel Thorpe, Senior Product Design Lead from Vodafone Smart Tech’s Design Studio, to learn about their design process and how they decided to start using 

Daniel and Ashton run the Design Studio for 

, a multi-disciplinary team of creative minds from across the globe specializing in Product Design, Industrial Design, and User Experience (UX) Research.

The Studio focuses on understanding the customer, their needs, desires, behaviors, and pain points – then they work with colleagues in Technology, Product, Creative, and Marketing to translate those insights into material user experiences and bring them to market. Ultimately, the Studio is responsible for concept design, research, prototyping, and the 

As a design leader, there are so many facets to the role! So how to summarize? My role is a vibrant mixture of hands-on design work, strategy, creative direction, and coordination. Most importantly, it’s about bringing together the wonderful talent we have in the Studio and helping them to do their best work. I suppose, ultimately, it’s about being a steward for the creative environment and having a laser focus on people—be it our customers or the folks in my care. -Ashton

I am a Senior Product Design Lead in the Studio. I work closely with Ash on several programs, but my focus is leading the design efforts for 

Working on IoT products is a three-dimensional challenge. You have a physical and a digital aspect, and we regularly need to simulate that relationship and make it feel as realistic as possible. Over the years, we have tried lots of tools. Some are great at rapid prototyping, others super-detailed orientated but complex to work with. In this last year, we discovered ProtoPie and have found it to be a great tool in helping bring our ideas to life. -Daniel

Why is prototyping important in the Smart Tech team’s workflow

As a designer, you want to move quickly from conception to reality—or something that at least feels real—as smoothly and seamlessly as possible.

For many years, this simply was not feasible. The process and tools didn't do enough or were time-consuming to learn. The industry had been crying out for something new in the prototyping space for a long time.

We all know how compelling static design can be, but when talking about digital products, the magic really appears in those moments between one frame and the next.

We work like many modern Studios in an iterative environment. This means we regularly present our concepts and scrutinize our thinking through usability studies. Over the years, we experimented with everything from paper prototyping (now that is going back quite a few years) to basic interactive models and rapid prototypes with basic page transitions.

However, through hundreds of hours of research, we have found that the more realistic we can make a prototype, look, and feel like what we have in our minds for the final product, the more honest the feedback is and the more useful for our designers.

Many consider animation and interaction the "icing on the cake" but that is a misguided view. Motion forms an essential part of our experience and relationship with a digital product, therefore, it's a critical element in the design solution. -Ashton

How they started using ProtoPie and why they continue to use it

We knew that we needed a prototyping tool, but it took a while for us to realize that 

 was our best bet. There are so many options on the market that we didn’t know where to start. But we always kept two questions in mind: what do we want to achieve? And how much time is our team willing to invest in learning a new tool?

As Ash mentioned, our goal is to create hyper-realistic experiences that we can take from concept to testing as quickly as possible. We historically had to settle for basic transitions and animations due to the limitations of the software that we were using. In many cases, this was fine, but we always knew that we’d receive more valuable (and authentic) feedback by providing participants with prototypes that were as close as the actual product itself.

I was initially nervous about picking a new tool for our team to use. But once we stumbled across your YouTube tutorials—and saw what other designers have been able to create using your tool— we knew it was right for us.

ProtoPie has allowed us to elevate our work to a level of fidelity that we had only been able to dream about. I was fascinated that ProtoPie allows you to control your prototype’s flow, interaction, and logic at the micro-level. This was unlike any other tool that I had come across.

ProtoPie is also strangely addictive. Once you start learning what it can do, you find yourself obsessively wanting to learn more about its capabilities. I regularly share my 

 with the team to inspire them to run their own. The tool gets better the more you learn about and use it. -Daniel

We have the three goals for ProtoPie. The first is all about 

; we want to provide our designers with the best tools to translate their ideas into something we can all feel and discuss. The second is about 

 as early as possible to elicit the most accurate response from our usability studies. The third, 

. Our studio operates remotely, and thus we need a tool that can allow us to build our reusable components and patterns, overtime the accumulated effort streamlines the prototyping phase and creates more time for exploration and iteration. -Ashton

"ProtoPie isn't just about the here and now. For

Studio, the tool also plays a key role in creating the building blocks that will power their future projects."

We are currently creating a set of reusable components that the team can drag and drop into their prototypes.

This serves two purposes for us moving forward. Initially, this will help us demonstrate how we envisage our components' animations and the timing. It's challenging to explain interaction details when you only have static designs, so ProtoPie really helps with that design development relationship.

Next, we hope to create a more comprehensive library of components that will allow us to speed up our entire prototyping/user testing process. The aim is to make sure that all designers feel comfortable using the tool daily. Once they do, this will take their design to the next level. -Daniel

How the team overcame the hurdles while learning ProtoPie

We're still learning the tool, but we have already noticed the positive impact that ProtoPie has on our daily design routines.

 that you folks have put online. We never have to go 'Wait—how do I do this?'. We just Google the problem, head to one of your tutorials, and 5 minutes later, we're ready to do it all by ourselves. Your tutorials are straightforward and make complex tasks (like creating a scroll animation trigger a chain condition that affects the styling of another element) seem simple.

We love that ProtoPie makes me say phrases like, ‘Wow, I just made that’ or ‘yes, I figured it out how to make it work!’ Having moments where you can see the design come to life is just a great feeling and something you really want to share those experiences with the people around you. -Daniel

For me, it is seeing the creativity and joy within the Studio, knowing the team has the kit they need to create something remarkable for our customers. ProtoPie has helped unlock a new level of creativity. We are already seeing more experimentation, richer interaction design, and better systems thinking. It is fair to say that today, ProtoPie is playing a key role in helping our designers express their own creative genius. -Ashton

They are always open to connecting with folks in the design community and are often looking for new talent. Feel free to connect with them on LinkedIn.

, where he has interviewed a variety of Design Leaders including 

. Both are great listens that give you a behind-the-scenes look inside the Smart Tech team’s creative culture. Enjoy!

If you want to learn more about the impact that 

 can have on your organization, sign up for our 

Deep dive with us into the Smart Tech Team’s workflow and learn how they are unleashing new creative genius through ProtoPie.

How Does ProtoPie Help Vodafone’s Smart Tech Team?

There were a lot of features and improvements in ProtoPie this year—dashboard, image fill, formulas in Playback, individual corner radius, the plugins for Adobe XD and Sketch, and many more. Many talented designers put these new features to good use, taking their designs to the next level. Let's start off 2022 the right way—with the 15 most inspirational interactive prototypes. Perhaps they could serve as interaction design inspiration for you.

I paid attention to the following in particular:

: Are the UI designs proper and following the latest trends?

: How interactive are the prototypes? What kind of microinteractions are there?

: How realistic do these interactions feel and look and how feasible are they?

 How creative and unique are the solutions the designers came up with?

: Good mix of prototypes for all kinds of digital products, e.g., mobile, web, desktop, and IoT?

The selected prototypes have been listed in random order. If you click on each link, you can see how they were made. For some of the prototypes, you can even try them out yourself and download the files.

VPN Interaction Concept by Aneesh Raveendran

There is no limitation with ProtoPie. We are ready to enhance your design skills with new features. If you’d like to know more about our tool, which these designers used to create advanced interactions easily that go beyond imagination, try it for free 

A curated list of inspirational prototypes and their interactions for 2022.

15 Most Inspirational Interactive Prototypes for 2022

 encouraging designers from all over the world to show us their prototyping skills. After receiving and reviewing more than 100 entries, a winner emerged: Richard Oldfield.

But Richard’s prototype wasn’t the only entry that caught our eye. 

 booking app was well-designed, imaginative, and clearly solved a real-life pain point. We decided to catch up with Lautaro and pick his brain to learn more about his career as a designer, why he created his booking prototype, and to learn about his top tips for succeeding as a freelancer in such a competitive industry.

Hi Lautaro, it’s great to meet you. Could you please tell us a little more about yourself and why you decided to become a designer?

It’s great to meet you, too! To be perfectly honest with you, I basically fell into becoming a designer. I’ve always enjoyed the creative process and have been designing things for as long as I can remember (CD covers, logos, websites, stamps, comics, etc.) This was before I even knew that you could get a job as a designer. Once I learned that it was a genuine profession—that people would pay me to design for them—I never looked back. I even decided to stop studying for my degree as I realized I could just start making money from being a designer. There was nothing else that I’d rather do with my time.

Fast forward a few years and I now work as the Lead UI Designer for an up-and-coming blockchain-based app. Sorry, I can’t give you too many more details as it’s still in development, but I figure it always helps to start the interview with a touch of mystery!

How would you describe your creative process?

All design stems from the same initial place: recognizing the problem that we’ve been presented with. Great design isn’t just about looks—it’s about providing people with something that makes their life easier, and that they love using.

Whatever aspect of design you’re working on, from branding to UI, to UX, to packaging, you’re still trying to provide a solution to a problem. The way in which you do this (and the tools you use) are where you can be a bit creative and show your own unique flair.

Design is everywhere we look, so I also make sure to be highly observant at all times. I’m like a sponge—I want to take everything in and retain as much of it as possible. I want to understand 

 a company, or a person, used a particular design. I don’t simply dismiss designs that I don’t like. Instead, I try to understand what they were trying to do and to be specific in my criticisms.

I don’t exactly have a creative process, but I strongly believe that these are the two core principles behind great design: a recognition of the problem, and a deep understanding of what works and what doesn’t. You can only gain this by being really inquisitive and examining every piece of design that you see around you. It might seem quite excessive, but you’ll soon get used to it—and you won’t be able to look at a design without automatically analyzing it.

Why did you want to become a freelancer, and what do freelancers need to be successful in such a competitive industry?

I definitely wasn’t built for a 9 to 5 sort of life. I like having freedom over my day and being able to dip into projects whenever I feel creative. On the flip side, I’m not a big fan of meetings, endless emails, and so on…

You’re right about it being a really competitive industry, but that doesn’t mean that freelancers can’t be successful. I have four core principles that I’d advise all fellow freelancers to follow:

 It can feel frustrating if you’ve just started out as a freelancer and you’re struggling to find clients. However, keep on knocking on their door and eventually, your opportunity will arise. Don’t give up having only begun just because you’ve had a tough couple of weeks. Once you do start to gain some momentum, you’ll quickly forget those tough times. Oh, and remember to be patient when it comes to building good relationships. You need to demonstrate your value, become known for delivering on time, every time, and eventually, you’ll have a bunch of committed clients that rely on you for all their design needs.

 Be dedicated to becoming the best designer you can possibly be. Don’t simply reach a stage where you’re earning a comfortable living and stop exploring new ideas or learning new skills. Most of all, make sure you’re doing things that you actually enjoy. This makes it a whole lot easier to be dedicated to your craft.

 As a freelancer, you’re a micro-business, so take your accounting duties seriously. Remember that you have to set some money aside for taxes and always have more in your account than you actually need. Even if you hire an accountant, I’d still always suggest that freelancers learn the basics themselves—this will help them better manage their money on a day-to-day basis.

 Don't work for people who don't value your work just because you want the money. There’ll always be other potential clients out there who will actually appreciate what you do!

 I sometimes joke that I hit 94.33% of all deadlines, but there’s a grain of truth in this—I hate submitting work late. Clients love reliability. They want to know that they can trust you. If you’re reliable and always meet deadlines, this will give you a major advantage over other freelancers.

How ProtoPie helps Lautaro achieve his goals

When did you discover ProtoPie and why did you choose it as your interaction design tool?

As soon as I heard about the concept of interaction design, I knew it was something that I wanted to try out for myself. I did a bit of research into the tools that could help me do this and found out about ProtoPie. Having conducted a bit more research, I realized that it was the best out of all the tools on the market—and I haven’t looked back since. I’d strongly recommend ProtoPie to all designers that want to get involved with interaction design.

How has ProtoPie helped you on your professional journey?

I think the most important thing is that ProtoPie helps my designs stand out from other proposals. Using ProtoPie to learn the ropes of interaction design has also dramatically expanded my skill-set. I’ve become so much more advanced in terms of considering aspects such as movement, rhythm, times, and space in my designs. Plus, I love the fact that it allows me to test interactions out at the very early stages of a project.

Overall, my expertise has come on leaps and bounds. I can confidently say that I’m a far better designer than I was before I’d started using ProtoPie.

How did you get the idea for the prototype that won you second place at our Dribbble Playoff?

I was living in Medellin, Colombia at the time and had been traveling a lot recently. Having booked a ton of flights in recent months, I was thinking about the reservation process and then suddenly an idea hit me: what if I could combine a flight booker with ProtoPie’s voice trigger feature? If I managed to do it, I’d create an agile, fast, and enjoyable way to book a flight that would need minimal time and effort—you could just speak into your phone. So I decided to try and create a 

prototype of a voice-assisted flight booker

. All in all, I was pretty happy with the final result—and clearly so were you guys!

However, I couldn’t have done it without ProtoPie. So if any designers out there are reading this, let me leave you with one final tip: 

Meet Lautaro Ferreyro, the runner-up at this year’s Dribbble Playoff, and discover what inspired him to compete in the first place.

Building Prototypes to Solve Personal Problems with the Runner Up From This Year's Dribbble Playoff Contest

Prototyping is a crucial process for all designers. This is true for teams that are creating a new product that nobody’s heard of—as well as for teams that are improving a well-loved tool used by billions of people across the globe.

Take Google Maps, for example. Despite its already massive impact, the team is always on the lookout for ways to make their product better. As they tweak and tinker, iterate and improve, they need to create prototypes along the way. This allows them to flesh out their ideas—to see how they’re shaping up and what needs to be improved. It also allows them to carry out invaluable usability testing and to gain prospects’ feedback before the new improvements are released.

So how does the Google Maps team create their prototypes? By using 

Customer Spotlight

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Feel inspired to make your own Pie?