POP - Prototyping on Paper

I first heard about the POP app during my UX boot camp. We used it for one of our first projects before we learned to use other design and prototyping tools. The app is very easy to use and quite honestly, it’s very cool! Anyone, not just designers, can use POP to help envision their app ideas. It can also be used to quickly test concepts with users or test basic flows and functionally with developers. As a UX Designer, I don’t use POP much anymore. But when I do, I will cut out a sheet of approximately the size of an iPhone screen. I’ll use that to trace many screens on another sheet of paper. From there I will draw out the different screens and flows of the app. I’ll even draw and cut things out like drop-down boxes if I want to show more functionality. Then I will take pictures of all the screens and add hot spots links. Ta-da! You have an app! I think POP would also be great for kids who are interested in design. They can easily draw out screens and link them all together. Having the screens on a mobile device almost makes it feel real. Overall, this is a fun app for low-fidelity prototyping!

I haven’t been using it for too long, but this idea is genius. It is super useful and fairly well made. My main suggestion is to improve the design abilities. The pen tool is virtually useless which is the biggest problem. I would like more icons available. There is no easy way to make a background besides making a large box. Otherwise, this is super neat and I haven’t seen any ads so far!

This app is very easy to use and makes it simple to get your ideas out of your head and into a format that you can easily share with people. It helps take the guess work out of setting up app development requirements. This platform saves time and helps you refine you iterate your ideas quickly.

As a designer this app is pretty cool. I can essentially give a working prototype rather quickly. As a developer, it’s lacking on APIs. Google Drive and other cloud storage (especially with open APIs) should have some time invested in them. Those alone will make a HUGE DIFFERENCE! I’d also try to partner up with Adobe’s Creative Cloud. And then try to add some hyperlink connectivity. If I could link these images to actual sites or html documents I could use this all day everyday.

This app is great—quick and easy to learn, intuitive, and allows you to build out your prototype to different degrees of fidelity. I was able to do early-stage user testing that I think surprised my testers with the level of interactivity. Definitely good for this purpose.