Please meet a creative team, which brings you ProtoShare. Blake Johnson, Josh Chaney and Peter Uchytil tell us what collaborative prototyping is about, discuss advantages of pure HTML/CSS+Javascript solution, hint on iPhone app coming and future ProtoShare roadmap, give advice on how to select the right wireframing tool and much more.

Audio interview has a lot of bonus content packed!

Sasha Kovaliov (SK): Would you please introduce yourself and tell us in several words what ProtoShare is about?
Blake Johnson (BJ): Hi, my name is Blake Johnson, Vice President of Business Development and co-founder of Site9 company.
Josh Chaney (JC): I’m Josh Chaney, Managing Director of ProtoShare. ProtoShare is a collaborative web-based prototyping tool for web sites and web apps. And the keyword is here “collaborative”, it really facilitates the whole discussion not only on the prototyping base but throughout all the development process from brainstorming, wireframing, design work, and even on the actual build phase.
Peter Uchytil (PU):  My name is Peter Uchytil, Product Manager. With ProtoShare we’re enabling discussion around the project so you could make sure that you’re building correct things.
BJ: We came from different backgrounds of Site9 which is a parent company of ProtoShare. We started as a web development company ourselves back in 1999, 10 years ago, and we did database-driven complex websites up till 2005 when we had developed a platform which we deployed ourselves, we called it “Launch Platform” and it helped to expedite interactive development. We decided to market that to get some venture capital and become a software company. We found some success, however, part of problem was it had a CMS built-in and a lot of larger companies wanted to have their own CMS solution. Our product also had some prototyping aspects built-in that a lot of people liked. So in 2008, last year, we broke out the prototyping aspect, and decided to make a SaaS application. That’s the short story how we came out with ProtoShare.

SK: ProtoShare is more a web development-centric solution, what are the modern tools of a web developer and what is the role of ProtoShare in this toolset?
BJ: If you get the tool you will see that it’s not just for web developers, it’s also for project managers, and art directors because you can review a creative concept online, project managers can come in and monitor where the project is, information architects can build out the prototypes, and stakeholders can be invited (management, marketing, clients) and participate in the dialog.
JC: There are really 2 parts of ProtoShare: the review process which is extremely simple, created for stakeholders, who don’t have time to learn the product (the number of reviewers is unlimited), and the developer’s part.
PU: A modern web developer certainly plays several roles nowadays and in larger organization these roles are going to be distributed among several people: user experience, design, information architecture, site structure, building the site itself. All those different roles can be fulfilled by a single person in a lot of cases or a couple of people, and ProtoShare addresses all those different roles.
You also can keep the client in the same system for other activities, for example for email campaign to review the message. If you need to look why the decision was made you also can go back to the history of the project and find relevant records, and we think it’s a great advantage.

SK: We are talking a lot about collaboration today. How does ProtoShare team collaborate with their users and gets their feedback for further development?
BJ: We’re on Facebook and Twitter, Linkedin and Youtube, and we do all the social media things that we can do, we monitor searches and anything about wireframing and prototyping. We gather feedback from all the users of the product, and a lot of the current features we have due to the feedback we have from the customers.
PU: When ProtoShare was still in beta we did usability testing. From the day one we were trying to get users’ and community feedback for better product design.

SK: You’ve just mentioned that you’re one of the oldest wireframing web app. Web is changing constantly – what emerging and existing trends do think influence the process of wireframing and prototyping and how do you reflect them in ProtoShare?
PU: The trends in wireframing right now are all about “doing more with less”, things that let you save money, make sure you can move the project forward. Tools become easier to use and access, which is especially important for customers. Regarding web trends in general we’re not really chasing the trends, because that’s the way to stay behind them. If you’re trying to build your own wireframing application you can do very sophisticated web actions, but then the problem is that you are going to spend a lot of time working with it. It’s a really a hard place to play. We think that we did tools so that people can describe the behaviors that they want on the web site and push the project forward.
BJ: If we were in any trend right now, which we mentioned earlier, our product does fit well with agile project development philosophy, rapid prototyping, and involving users.

SK: Peter, here I hear it again “more is less”. A lot of online applications are getting really popular because you don’t have to install or upgrade anything, just go to the web page and you have your working application. However, a lot of people nowadays still prefer to have an offline application. Do you think that you’re going to make an offline version of ProtoShare?
JC: Earlier we had it on our roadmap. Right now we’re a web-based application and to make it offline requires serious development work. We wouldn’t like to spend development time on those features instead of building a more sophisticated product and reaching more customers.
BJ: Technologies are emerging, they are still immature, the idea is awesome, and we have a request for that. But you have to be careful with this trade-off between online and desktop apps.
PU: I think that it’s also something that people are getting more and more comfortable with: online apps and cloud computing. Web developers and design agencies are going to be early adopters of the whole cloud methodology so it seems like a good fit for us.
JC: Before developing an offline application we may to prefer to develop iPhone version to allow reviewers to comment on wireframes.

SK: Being a totally online application has limitations on browsers. As we checked yesterday the browsers that are supported right now: Firefox, IE, and Safari. Do you plan to support any other browsers (e.g. Opera, Chrome)?
PU: There are 2 sides of ProtoShare:  for developers and for reviewers, and review side is sort of client-facing and there are no any browser limitations. The reason we haven’t done extensive testing in Opera, for example, is simple: we take into account market numbers too. Each browser that we have in testing rally increases testing time, so if we are going to support it will take a lot of efforts. Unfortunately, there are still browser differences between PC and Mac. Our long-term goal is to have 4 browsers support for everything as soon as it’s viable to do: we have limited resources. For example IE’s and Firefox’s Javascript is just one huge difference. Our customer base of web designers use primarily Firefox and that makes a lot of sense to develop with Firefox in mind, making sure that review can be handled in all the browsers.

SK: At the very beginning you mentioned that your product is built in CSS/Html/JavaScript. If you have built it in Flash or Flex it would work in all the browsers.  Why did you make that choice?

PU: The original technology is based on other product “Launch” and at that time it was Html/Flash hybrid application. We pulled Flash out and left HTML, we really feel that the html nature of ProtoShare allows us to do things that others don’t do or just can’t do easily. For example, we can use CSS to do the styling of components, and we were told that web developers just love that. It takes a little work to get there, but if you’re an advanced user this is not a problem.
BJ: We can reveal what we’re planning for our next release: we call it html sand-box.
PU: It will allow users to extend ProtoShare in any way they want. If they want to support a certain component they don’t have to wait us to build it, they can build it themselves. And that’s not kind of thing you can get from Flash-based application.

SK: Are there any other innovations which are coming with the new version?
BJ: We’ve just had a release but we’re planning to improve review and project management aspects of application, to make the processes more robust and suitable for larger companies.
JC: With the last release ProtoShare 3.5 (August 23^rd, 2009) we’re really facilitating collaboration throughout the whole web development process.
http://www.protoshare.com/ProtoShare-Benefits/

SK: Here is a bit tricky question. There are so many players popping up in the wireframe apps market. You’re not a new player here. Can you give any tips to our readers how to select the best wireframe application for their needs?
JC:  The reason that you build a prototype is that you so can get feedback and start a discussion so you can make refinements during prototyping phase, rather than doing rework at the backend, which makes it more expensive.  When it comes to choosing the right tool everybody has different needs so I’m not saying that one tool can fit everyone. But my only suggestion would be, when evaluating these tools ask yourself some questions: am I creating a prototype to generate a discussion and gather feedback,  is access easy for my stakeholders at all the points of the process, what this tool offers now, what’s its potential for future.

SK: Guys, thanks for the great interview and ideas you’ve shared with our readers. Protoshare is truly and amazing product, and we are sure you’ll make it even better!

Related posts:

1. Wireframe, Collaborate and PM with iPlotz
2. Experience Functional Wireframing with Justinmind
3. Diving in Prototyping with Axure

We’ve been really busy here for the last two weeks. Wireframing marathon is rolling smoothly and attracts quite a lot of attention. However, you can always make something better and we’ve compiled two helpful monitoring tools for you to keep an eye on wireframing and prototyping topics around the web. What is more, we are now all ears to your ideas at GetSatisfaction, added nice Facebook sharing button and Facebook Page (there are lots of  FB folks here), and created LinkedIn Group, so you can have a meaningful conversation with other pros.

Twitter search:
Twitter can do wonders when you ask it correctly. On the right you can see a stream of tweets related to wireframing that contain useful links. Plunge into it from time to time to grasp what’s hot on Twitter and what people are sharing. The direct link to wireframing twitter search:
http://bit.ly/wireframingtwse

FriendFeed Group:
After playing with twitter for a while, it appeared that there are far more places that people share info on wireframing and prototyping, and this content is good. We’ve used Yahoo! Pipes to create an RSS feed that sucks lots of information from trusted sources, removes duplicates and gives you a clean nice result. Yahoo! Pipes are editable, so if you’d like to tweak it and enhance with more resources you are welcome.
What an RSS feed is when you can’t comment and share it with others? Right! We’ve created a group CIOHH: Wireframing on FriendFeed that is also nicely displayed on the right, so you can track new items when you are on our website as well. Group is open for all, so go ahead – add your own great news or suggest resources we should add.

GetSatisfaction:
We’ve mentioned on Twitter earlier this week that we are even closer to you now. CIO Happy Hour Team will be glad to answer any questions you have and discuss your creative ideas on GetSatisfaction. See this grey Feedback button on the right? Click it any time you have a suggestion or a praise – we will take action as soon as possible and, best of all, everybody else can see your input and engage!

Facebook:
It appeared that there are many visitors, who come to CIOHH from Facebook. We adore our readers, and to make it easier for you FB fans, we’ve installed a one-click sharing button. There is also a CIO Happy Hour page on Facebook as well – drop by and say hi when you have time :).

LinkedIn:
As CIO Happy Hour resource spins around professionals it was a natural decision to settle on LinkedIn as well. New connections you can make with the help of LinkedIn do matter – it’s a brilliant opportunity to meet with great minds in your niche.

One more thing! We do need your comments and participation to make CIO Happy Hour truly what it should be – a conversation platform for professionals. Next time you are around, drop us a comment or even two :)

See you later this week with more interviews with wireframing market leaders.

Related posts:

1. Wireframing Dialogue with ProtoShare
2. Ultimate Wireframing Toolbox (updated)

Today we are speaking with Baard Overgaard Hansen, country manager Scandinavia with Pixum. Pixum is one of the leading international online photo services and provides free online albums and photo-sharing capabilities to its customers. You can order inexpensive prints and it’s not limited just to paper! Pixum prints calendars, cards, puzzles, mugs, t-shirts, etc.

Baard has been with Pixum for 2 years now, and is responsible for the marketing of Pixum photo-products in Scandinavian countries (Sweden, Norway, and Denmark). Furthermore, Baard is a community manager working with social media: Facebook, Twitter, etc. 

Sasha Kovaliov (SK): Baard, can you please tell our readers and listeners what Pixum is about?
Baard Overgaard Hansen (BH): Pixum is an online photo service, where people can upload their digital images and order prints, photo books, hats, mugs, etc. We have about 70 different products, which people can order from us.

SK: Right now Pixum is a brilliant company. Looking back 10 years ago when the company was established, what do you think was for important for its growth: technological advantage or founders’ business skills?
BH: I think it was a little bit of both. Pixum had a technology and an idea how to do it. When you start a company in this business domain you should have a mix of very technical and marketing-minded people on your team.

SK: There are a lot of startups right now, a bit less during economic recession, what do you think are the typical mistakes that startups make nowadays?
BH: I think the most important thing for every startup is to put a customer in the center of their business, as happy clients are the most important factor. Without satisfied customers it’s impossible to build a healthy business. You always have to keep that in mind whatever you’re doing.

SK: From your own experience, do you think there were unsuccessful steps in Pixum history? Or everything was perfect?
BH: I can say, on the general, everything was pretty perfect. Proof that we’re doing it correctly is a large customers base, we’re hiring more people and it’s all going in the right direction. As far as I can see, the future is bright for Pixum.

SK: Glad for you! You mentioned that the key factor is to be customer-centric. Do you think it’s the key which differentiate you from other competitors?
Yes, I think so. We’re concentrating on social media more and more and that means, we engage with the customers in another way and are getting new customers. If a company understands social media and how it works (Twitter, Facebook fan pages), then they communicate with the customers in quite a different way in coordination with other marketing tools like e-mail subscriptions and customer service.

SK: Absolutely. Actually, you and I, we met at Friendfeed, as I remember…
BH: That’s right.

SK: In your everyday work, can you tell us what is the utmost social media tool you use and how do they help to drive innovation and bring more customers to Pixum?
Well, I think, at the moment, we are focused on different social media tools and I’ve been doing that for the last couple of years. At the moment twitter is our main social media tool because we get a lot of feedback from customers and we can also talk with our customers publicly, so everybody else can see what’s going on. Feedback might be negative or positive – all for the good, as we can react and react fast! What is more it’s a great competitor spying tool: what are they doing, what our customers are saying about our competitors? Twitter is a huge tool, because we can use it for so many different things. You just have to be creative.
SK: Do you see unique ways of using twitter or any other social media tool to enhance the service that Pixum provides?
BH: I can tell you one thing, which people shouldn’t do, which we tried here, when we started using Twitter. It’s a promotional campaign. We’re still doing that but not as much as before. We offered customers and all our followers a free poster…
SK: Yes, I remember that campaign.
BH: You know, usually people come and get a poster and then leave. We don’t want a customer base like that, we don’t want quantity, what matters is quality. We would like our followers to be with us for a specific reason: good products, great feedback, etc. We are not aiming at a higher number of followers who would like to get a free product and then leave. We won’t do any similar campaigns, I think.
SK: You have quite a large amount of employees at Pixum twittering?
BH: That’s right.
SK: How do you coordinate who tweets what? Do you have a corporate policy on social media?
BH: Yes, we have a corporate social media policy and we also twitter together via Cotweet. Each member of my team concentrates on one or two twitter accounts, as we have about 50 accounts at Pixum.
SK: Fifty? That’s a lot!
BH: Yes, and we started early. For example, @photobook belongs to us and of course we @Pixum is our main account. We have different accounts for each country in various languages and for other products. It would be very foolish to think you can manage all the accounts, so only about 15 of them are active.

SK: Let’s talk about traditional advertisement tools. Do you employ search engine optimization or any advertisements with other partner sites?
BH: No, not really, not as much. We focus on two things: Google adwords and affiliate programs. Besides these, we don’t do anything that you might call “traditional” internet marketing.
SK: Pixum is all into social.
BH: Yes.

SK: Baard, let’s go back to the technological part. Your team is concentrated on the customer service. You outsource the development of your main product, is that right?
BH: Yes, that’s right. Our products are being outsourced, that’s right.
SK: Can you tell us about your experience in web design and development outsourcing? Is it positive? Are there any rough edges about it?
BH: I can’t think of any. Usually it is OK and has its advantages and very little disadvantages. If you bring people from the outside of your team, they have another look at your product. They look at it in another way: you get fresh ideas and manifold views and that’s great. The only disadvantage is a slight culture difference, but that’s a minor problem.
SK: Some companies are afraid to outsource because they think it’s far away and they will not be able to manage the team efficiently. Do you think this is a problem?
BH: No, on the contrary, at Pixum we do not have this problem.
SK: And one more question regarding the development. Who is the innovator, who brings the new ideas? Is it the marketing team or developers? Maybe customers?
BH: Right! Well, the customers are always a great source for new ideas. They tell us why don’t you do this, why don’t you do that. We are always trying to collect the clients’ concepts and tips and forward them to both the development and marketing department. They sit together and consider the ideas. Of course, marketing produces its own ideas as well. For example, we are making a new shop right now, and it’s a much better shop, it’s much more like Amazon. We also learn from our competitors and big companies.
SK: So it is a triangle: customers-developers-marketing, right?
BH: That’s right.

SK: I would like to cite PC advisor: “Easybook is intuitive beyond compare in terms of ease in use and creative options. It’s hard to imagine it being beaten”. What are the next steps in the development of you unbeatable software? How do you see Pixum in a year?
BH: We are constantly making more photoproducts. The challenge is to keep the software simple: with our software you can make a photobook just in three minutes. It’s that easy. We also encourage customers to produce photographs with Adobe InDesign and Quark Express. Then it is be possible to order a photobook just by sending us a PDF file. I think in the future it will be important to have online software, everything will be online and accessible from everywhere. In a few years there will be a shift from all offline photobook software to cloud versions of these products.
SK: Baard, you just mentioned that you are hoping Pixum customers would start using professional design software. Does it mean that you will be shifting to more professional users?
BH: I think there is a market for that, but we are not concentrating on professional users, it’s not our priority. We are mainly a consumer-based company and we work for the mass consumers, we work for a larger market because we are not big enough to open a professional department to cater for professional designers yet. Of course, we are trying to help people, photographers, for example, who want to order their own specific products with their own logo.

SK: Baard, thanks a lot for your time for the interview. We hope that Pixum will be doing as great as it has been doing for 10 years and wish you a great amount of new followers on Twitter, Friendfeed, Facebook and new happy customers.
BH: Thank you very much, Sasha.

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