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At Pidoco, we’ve updated our navigation system. We’ve made it even easier for you to move between the pages and layers of your prototype, helping you get to the parts of your project you need quickly and easily. We have now included forward and back buttons to help you go back to the previous view of your prototype, just like in your browser bar.

Moving to a new page in your prototype

We’ve introduced a breadcrumb system, which enables you to see where you are in your prototype at any time. Boxes will appear at the top of your screen showing you which prototype, folder and page you are working from. These are clickable, which means if you are working from a page, you can go back to these sections. When you hover over the arrows in your breadcrumbs, a menu will also appear. You can then use this to switch to a different page or layer in your prototype, without having to go back to the prototype view. This is a fantastic feature, which should make finding your pages even easier.

The breadcrumb navigation in our prototype creator lets you see what global layer you're working on

Thanks to another great feature we have added, you can work on different pages of your prototype in different browser tabs. What’s more, if you do this, the tabs in your browser will be clearly labeled to show what pages or layers you are working on. In your browser, you will then be able to change the order of your tabs to suit you and use shortcuts to flick through these tabs. To open a page in a new browser tab, simply click on the page whilst holding down the ctrl button. You can also click on the special icon in the breadcrumb menu. With Pidoco, you can save the URLs of these tabs for the next time you work on your prototype. What’s more if you send the URL to someone collaborating with you on a prototype, they will also be able to open this page automatically.

These are just some of the new features we’ve added to make working on your prototypes even easier. We hope you enjoy working with our new navigation system. To see how the new Pidoco navigation system works, you can also check out our YouTube video! Pidoco explained: the new breadcrumb navigation pidoco

Pidoco and ScatchApp are joining forces to help our users make the most of paper prototyping. While Pidoco is a great tool for creating UI prototypes of websites and software applications really easily, we still find that some of our users prefer to create their initial designs on paper. To help our users save time and money, we are working with ScatchApp to see if we can make it easier for our users to transform their paper wireframes into interactive software prototypes. We believe ScatchApp is a great tool that will help our users create prototypes even faster than before and take advantage of the great collaboration and testing features Pidoco has to offer. ScatchApp has won several awards and is a triple Startup Weekend winner of Szczecin 2011 due to its innovation merging the boundaries between paper and computer.

How does ScatchApp work?

ScatchApp works by using unique technology that can recognize the layout and features of paper wireframes. ScatchApp can recognize components such as text boxes, headlines, buttons and image place-holders, which is great, whether you are creating flowcharts or wireframes. Uploading your designs with ScatchApp is easy. Simply draw your sketch on a piece of paper using the relevant symbols, take a photo with your mobile phone and upload the image to ScatchApp. Within seconds, your design will be transformed into a digital wireframe that you can edit online in Pidoco. ScatchApp even aligns the individual elements in your design, giving you a clean, professional-looking layout.

We've sketched out a paper wireframe of the Pidoco home page that we will upload with ScatchApp.

How will you be able to use ScatchApp with Pidoco?

Here’s an example of how to use Pidoco in connection with ScatchApp. We understand that some people like to sketch out their ideas on paper first. Some even find this helps them be more creative. Naturally, paper has its limitations and even the best paper wireframes cannot produce the same results as prototyping with Pidoco. In addition, paper prototypes cannot be adapted or shared easily. In the example above, you can see that we’ve sketched out the layout of the Pidoco home page. In the picture below, you can see what the finished product will look like in Pidoco once this has been uploaded into ScatchApp. The buttons, text boxes and image placeholders appear in the same visual layout as in the sketch.

Now we've uploaded our sketched wireframe to Pidoco, we can edit our prototype and add interactive elements.

In Pidoco we can now link and edit these pages. With Pidoco you can also collaborate on prototypes online in real-time and even use your prototypes in usability testing. What’s more you can discuss your prototypes with colleagues online. Using ScatchApp with Pidoco therefore enables you to model your UI designs with paper and pen, while making the most of all the great features of digital prototyping that Pidoco has to offer. If you would like to learn more about Pidoco have a look at our website, or if you would like to learn how to program your own application against the Pidoco API, take a look at our documentation here.