Sad news. Pixate is shutting down. I felt the same way when Flash faded away. While Pixate isn’t dominant like Flash, it certainly attracted a large group of people who love the simple concept of making prototypes. It was a good tool that contributed a lot and we’ll see its end soon. We won’t cry over its death, but moving to another tool requires learning something new, which can be a pain.
Is that so? Some time ago, a designer showed me something he was working on that looked like something more or less like Pixate, but a little better. (it’s even a beta.) What he showed me was called ProtoPie, and it eased my worries. On a different note, the name makes me hungry and starve for prototyping!
That designer, Tony Kim, was an interaction designer at Google. He felt that there was a need for designers and developers to communicate more easily. He wanted to make something designers can use right away without Googling. That’s why he aimed for WYSIWYG and code-free tools.
It didn’t take that long for me to learn ProtoPie. I’d say I picked it up in just as much time as, or much quicker than other prototyping tools like, say, Principle or Flinto. You can drag and drop things and adjust some values, and then tada! With a few hours of learning, I was able to make the prototype shown below. Coming from Pixate, ProtoPie doesn’t really require more brain muscles to flex. You can just start right away.
Superior Features
Then why is it better than other options available to us? ProtoPie promises 6 superior features on top of fundamental functions such as Sketch import.
Super Low Learning Cost
All the functions you can play with fall in three simple categories: Trigger, Object, and Response. Together, they form an interaction. For instance, let’s assume there is a button that moves. If you touch a button, it moves. Touching acts as the Trigger, the button acts as the Object and the movement acts as the Response.
Sensor Integration
You can utilize bulit-in sensors in smartphones like the accelerometer, gyroscope, microphone, camera, and 3D Touch. You can make a panorama picture that you can look around in by tilting your phone just like in Facebook. I also tried to make a Shazam-like prototype featured above by using the microphone. It was easy and worked great.
Device to Device Communication
ProtoPie supports communication among two or more devices without OS dependency. You can prototype a chat app or money transfer app to mimic the real-world apps. (see below)
Chain Reaction Instead of if-then Statement
Developers write if-then statements for interactions triggered conditionally. ProtoPie totally revamped this concept. You can compose conditional interactions simply by mapping other objects’ behaviors.
Playing Speed Control
You can control the speed of prototype playback without editing the original source.
Scene Composition
As there are numerous interactions on one canvas in most prototyping tools, the difficulty and complexity of the prototype spikes rapidly. Scenes keep a prototype simple and improve readability for collaboration.
Although ProtoPie has some great features already in beta, I want to see a few more things in future versions, like:
- Live preview
- Conditions (these may soon be available.)
- Figma import
- More sample prototypes
RIP Pixate, Welcome ProtoPie
I’m sorry to see Pixate shutting down, and it’s unfortunate for those who put in the time and effort to learn how to use it effectively. If Pixate was your good friend, you may want to try ProtoPie.
Don’t keep your ideas stuck in your head. Your ideas to amaze the world are about to be realized. ProtoPie is there for you. Download ProtoPie beta now and let your imagination take shape.
