First impressions are important.  I was asked by someone at Generic Frame to look at their prototyping tool, so I wrote down the impressions I got after using it for about a half hour.

Warning 1: I didn’t like it much.
Warning 2: I don’t like prototyping tools in general. (Axure, JustinMind)

Here is the story of my first 30 minutes.

Logging in
Why do I have to give you my email address AND a username?  Can’t I just give you my email address?  Why do you need both.  It’s just a pain in the ass.  And even having a password, can’t I just login with GMail or Twitter or some other OpenID provider? Jeff Atwood says you should and he is pretty smart.  After I got over my annoyance, I was logged in.

The User Interface
This is built in Flex/Flash.  Seems like an anachronism at this point, doesn’t it?  Who thinks Flash has a long term viability on the web?  Adobe doesn’t seem to.  Seems like HTML5 is the better choice.

Looking directly at the UI, I was struck by how there was no big logo anywhere.  I could have been looking at anything.  There was a tiny icon on the top left, but I had to search for it.  This is a branding fail.  An app needs to have a presence.  It needs to be recognizable from 10 feet.

Trying to Use it
Arrghhhh.  This was frustrating.  It looks like PowerPoint with absolutely positioning, but really didn’t have an interaction design model anything like it.  For instance, you drag on a Canvas and it creates this thing to move around. See below

Notice how you can’t drag the item from the body of the item like most systems.  You have to grab that middle + and drag from that.  This became highly annoying.

I started to get confused by the different panel types and other things I could drag on.  It seemed like there were fewer interaction components than I typically needed.

Slowly Getting the Gist
After a little while I could understand what they were going for. It didn’t make me like prototyping tools any better, but I remembered what I experienced with Axure and JustinMind.  There are clearly a ton of details in here and you wouldn’t be able to get value out of it until you got the hang of it.  I was able to make something with a grid and tabs after a little while.

Right Clicking
I am a right-clicker by nature.  I want to right-click on something and manipulate it.  I don’t want to go to some property sheet and click buttons that are far away from the object I care about.  I think, more than anything else, this bugged me the most.

I couldn’t tell how to create reusable objects, although I assume you can. I could see how there were different views, but it wasn’t simple of lovable.  Generally, I wanted to stop using it after 30 minutes.

Seeing your handy work
I wanted to see what this thing looked like, so I clicked File-Export.  It gave me a warning of some kind and I clicked OK. It brought me to a page with XML on it.  I was confused, so I clicked back.  All of my work was gone. Are you kidding me?  How could the system not save my work?  How could export not use a different window or tab?

Save-as-you-go is the best way to handle a web application.  Stop asking me to save, just do it for me.  This is the modern web!  That experience was brutal.  Losing your work is about the worst thing that can happen in an online prototyping tool.

Summary
Prototyping takes too long and has too little value.  This tool is an online version of desktop software like Axure.  It’s complicated and limited just like the other competitors.  It’s not lovable like Balsamiq and not ubiquitous like PowerPoint.  In my judgement, the UX of this product is pretty poor and it is destined to be a bit player in a small market.

I really wanted to like the software.  I went in with a positive attitude.  I apologize to anyone offended by my critique.  I encourage anyone/everyone to use it and see for themselves.

Say the name of the product depicted below.  Every word makes me salivate.  Oh my god, I want to shove 20 of these in my mouth and make my blood sugar spike.  It’s not the name of a product, it’s a list of yummy ingredients.  Each cookie probably shortens my life by 4 hours, but who cares.  I saw this in the store and I had to have it.  I was compelled.  Pretty great packaging and naming.  Nice job.

I have no idea what I was thinking.  Why did I install Windows 8 on my Samsung Series 9 laptop?  It was running great.  I was happy.  Now, I have this ridiculous operating system with its horrible Metro UI.  Can you tell I don’t like it?

The start menu disappeared.  All these tiles showed up and none of them seem to work.  I couldn’t find anything I was looking for.  It’s buggy.  REALLY buggy.  I just don’t see the benefit of the new Metro tiles thing.  Maybe if it was a touch screen, but with a trackpad it was awkward at best.

I saw someone running Ubuntu on their desktop.  It had this cool flexy window thing when you dragged windows around.  It was cool!  That’s what I want.  I want fancy effects.  I don’t need a new lame tiles thing.  I almost installed Ubuntu after seeing it!

Windows 8 doesn’t seem to improve anything.  Let’s see how it fits in with other releases.  My reaction to each Windows release:

1. Windows 3.1 – Better than DOS!
2. Win 95 – Nice!
3. Win 98 – Excellent!
4. Win NT 4 – Fine, for servers.
5. Win ME – WTF?!
6. Win 2000 – Multi-threaded!  Awesome!
7. Win XP – Perfect!
8. Win Vista – Slow, junky, buggy.
9. Win 7 – Yay! Back on track!
10. Win 8 preview – Ouch!

I’ve beta tested every single one of these operating systems.  I would consider myself an expert in Microsoft operating systems.  This latest technical preview is pretty lame.  I calls it likes I sees it.

Now, I just need to decide if I uninstall back to 7 or try to live with it until the next technical preview.  Something tells me I will re-install Windows 7.

A few years ago, my wife gave me a Ukulele as a birthday present.  Although I had never played an instrument before, I found the ukulele delightful and easy to play.  It’s soothing and fun and easy to carry around.  People love hearing it.  Lately, I have been giving it to my son Ethan to play.  As a holiday present, I got us tickets to see the grand master of ukes, Jake Shimabukuro.

The concert was amazing.  It’s just Jake with some dry ice smoke in the background and some lighting.  No chair, no singing, just Jake and the Uke.  One might think it would be boring, but it was anything but.  We were mesmerized.  I took a little video of Jake doing Journey’s Don’t Stop Believing.  Click image below.

He also did Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah, George Harrison’s While My Guitar Gently Weeps and Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody.  Plus he had a bunch of songs he wrote, all with no words, just uke.  They were great.  I especially liked Five Dollars Unleaded, although the tune is extremely reminiscent of another song, but I can’t place it.  As it was playing, I made up lyrics like “I..have lots of gas, lots of gas, lots of gas.”

Afterwards, Jake signed our Ukulele and posted for a picture with Ethan (above).  Great guy, great concert, totally out of the ordinary.  Highly recommended viewing.  Also, for Christmas, consider an inexpensive Uke, it’s a great present.

Video of my presentation from Wakanday JS Everywhere conference 2011.