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olivierduval
estsauver
The reason that I've heard used repeatedly is that a shocking percentage of folks who aren't Technology producers can't separate visual quality from "doneness" of a project. If you show some business folks something that looks like it works, they'll mentally update the project to "Nearly done!" and then everything else after that becomes "Unreasonable delays."
appendix-rock
Yes. This is precisely it. There aren’t two sides to this, just people that haven’t themselves experienced this absolutely inevitability. These sorts of inexact-looking tools are worth their weight in gold for that reason alone.
dmje
I presented a wireframe to a curator at The Science Museum once years ago - even after lots of "please bear in mind this is just a prototype" type disclaimers, his first response was "surely it'll have more colour and pictures than this?".
So. Yeh.
mhuffman
I have had prospective clients do it from non-interactive graphic mock-ups -- just pictures! They assumed that was the hard part and just "wiring up the buttons" would be a short simple task. Those were frustrating discussions.
com
Devil’s advocate … why shouldn’t this be true? That’s how HyperCard worked, right?
dspillett
This is unfortunately very true. You also have to be very careful with word/phrase choice in discussion about future work: people often hear “what we could do, is…” as “there is already a full feature that allows you to configure the tool to do…”.
You really have to drill home that ideas and possibilities are just that, and not concrete features that they could start using tomorrow.
edmundsauto
Why is this unfortunate? If it weren’t true and people could separate the things, would we really be better off?
I ask because this guy s a common lament, but I’ve never figured out why. It shouldn’t be a surprise or (to me) disappointment that the fidelity of a communication also carries signal about the status.
Groxx
There is definitely this, but also: if it looks "refined", people start getting attached to what they see, and it affects how they react to the final product.
Any change from that haphazard throwaway with nice colors is suddenly a change they have opinions about, because it feels like a change.
If you show them something that's obviously not what will ship, they don't get as attached.
---
This is also partly a "most people don't understand the design process" thing, and just how much reworking and restarting is generally necessary to get an actually-good end result. If they see hundreds of mockups (or even sketches), they'll wonder why you haven't made hundreds of products, rather than those being merely tools used to think along the way.
duggan
This is also what I've heard and experienced.
Actually I don't think "technology producers" are entirely excluded from this bias either. I've assumed more complexity than there was in reality (possibly due to my background in infrastructure and backend), but other developers I've worked with certainly fall more into the trap of "there's a UI? now it's just a simple matter of CRUD."
viraptor
While this is likely true for designs, I believe there's more to it. I switched from straight to cartoon lines for my architecture / planning diagrams and suddenly started getting more unprompted comments about how they're clear and approachable.
Personally I also prefer the hand-drawn style, but can't put my finger on why. There's something about the uneven lines filling out the space better, while still defining the shapes well.
llamaimperative
I think you're pointing to the positive case of the same effect, which is that people use "hints" from the level of detail of something to determine the level at which they ought to inspect something.
Lower fidelity puts the viewer in a more conceptual mode of assessment, and there they can more easily perceive the clearness/approachability of your concepts.
mguerville
And criticize the colors, shading, exact sizes of UI elements, etc. instead of the underlying holistic UX
rpastuszak
A) Make it easier to focus on the core aspects of the problems instead of obsessing with details (applies to both designers and "reviewers")
B) An "unfinished" messy design is an invitation for critical feedback. If you give people something that looks too polished, they might be afraid that they'll break it, that they don't understand it, that they can't give feedback that is "good enough".
In short: if it looks like a toy people will play with it.
* C) The reason many of these tools look like Balsamiq has more to do with the tech of the late 00s/early 10s. This specific style of vector art was pretty easy to achieve in Flash.
Beretta_Vexee
This style says ‘it's a draft’ ‘it's an idea’. This is very important for communication within the team. It also allows you to concentrate on the essential points and not on the details (I don't like this font, the centring isn't perfect, etc.).
To my great surprise, even for training courses, this style encourages questions and interaction with the students. There's a whiteboard feel to it which suggests that the presentation isn't set in stone.
specialist
Right. The more polished a rendering is, the more people are emotionally attached to it. Keeping it rough enables brainstorming, whatifs, etc.
Ages ago, when CAD was new, architects would show customers tracings (of plots). For all the same reasons.
The practice was so common that my buddy (also an architect) created a "hand plot" driver for AutoCAD. "Messy" hand drawn look instead of precise line work. The driver was huge popular.
ramraj07
If I draw something in balsamiq, I’m typically “forgiven” for how basic the design looks. Try and do the same in let’s say MS paint and you could be called unprofessional and lazy. But this style seems to communicate strongly that this is a basic barebones wireframe.
Honestly it also looks better.
victorbjorklund
I usually dont use wireframes like this but one benefit is that it clearly communicates "this is NOT a finished design". Way to many times you bring a figma/mvp to get feedback on the "big picture" like the user flow etc but people get stuck on "the margin on that box is wrong" or "can we use another font?" when they see a design that looks like a "finished" product. You dont have that issue with wireframes.
ashildr
It’s an abstraction that makes people focus on the part that is relevant for the discussion at hand, and not on implementation details.
mitchbob
One of the most valuable things you can do with early prototypes is have prospective users try them, to see whether they're understandable and meet users' needs. When a prototype looks unfinished, users understand that it can be changed, and you can collaborate with them and explore ideas for making the prototype better.
veenified
Sometimes the pixel perfect details don't matter for a use case, so why set the hi-fi expectation for both the designer and developer. The designer can get caught up in choosing colors and pixel-perfect layout, and similarly the developer implementing on that design might unnecessary time attempting to match the hi-fi design.
juliushuijnk
If you want to do this kind of thing on your phone, you can try my TinyUx: https://www.tinyux.app/
It has a non-standard UX itself, because of the small screen.
thebeardisred
Kudos for the wonderful onboarding tutorial. I appreciate that it was a 100% demonstrative process.
antisthenes
Why is this on a phone?
Are you supposed to draw the UI with your finger or something?
albertgoeswoof
So cool!
Do you have an iOS version?
aloisdg
nice! Is it FOSS? Can I contribute to it?
steveharman
Would be nice to see a "push to Figma" option - where a lot of high fidelity work will probably be started, based on wireframes.
niklauslee
Good point. Added to our backlog.
pabe
Looks nice, like excalidraw fine tuned for wireframes. However, I'm on Linux so I'm not able to use the app.
melicerte
wireframesketcher[1] seems to do the same than Konty and runs on linux. I'm not related to them in any way but use this solution for years and I'm very happy with it (paying customer).
aloisdg
love excalidraw btw
jksmith
Dig it. I use Balsamiq all the time. Some challenges when using Wine, so I have to open a cringey Klaus Schwab windows machine. Would be great if this app showed Linux some love.
nreece
Looks good!
I wonder if there's a way to combine a simple tool like yours (or Balsamiq, which I've used for many years) with generative AI to create plain HTML/CSS pages from mockups/wireframes. Figma seems bloated, v0 is React/Tailwind only.
yoz
TLDraw Make Real - which was initially thrown together by a Figma engineer who added GPT vision to an open source whiteboard app - is remarkably good at this.
You can find it at https://makereal.tldraw.com/ but the guide there doesn't explain how to get the best out of it. I recommend this article by the TLDraw team which goes into some of the remarkable tricks you can use, and what people have done with it: https://tldraw.substack.com/p/make-real-the-story-so-far
rnavi
Make real tdraw is just amazing. Love it.
niklauslee
Yes, we are thinking about integrating with AI!
pcranaway
I love how I just downloaded this, and had the wireframe of my app's main screen built within 3 minutes of me knowing about this piece of software
8mobile
Hi, Balsamiq is one of my favorite products, I have already downloaded konty and I stress it a lot. Congratulations for the idea and for the product, how did you come up with it? After the beta will it be paid? I will give you some feedback soon. Thanks
niklauslee
Thank you for your feedback. I'm thinking of the paid version. I would like to offer it much cheaper than balsamiq, probably. Additionally, we'll be offering strong discounts for early users.
nprateem
You should consider a one time, lifetime payment. As a solo dev working on occasional side projects I just wouldn't even consider something on a subscription, and $140 (balsamiq's one time fee) is about $100 more than I'd pay. My alternative is a graphics app I already own.
Follow what Affinity did (cheap and one-time) and you'll sell to a lot of people like me who would otherwise give it a miss. Save your subscription tiers for businesses needing more collaboration, SSO, etc.
With that strategy as well you'll build brand awareness which will probably ultimately lead to more sales as those solo devs advocate for its use in teams in their day jobs.
hermitcrab
Do not give free upgrades for life. You will almost certainly regret it. Many people have made this mistake. https://successfulsoftware.net/2008/09/08/should-i-give-free...
GordonS
IIRC, an age ago Balsamiq also offered one-time payments for lifetime desktop access.
tyrw
Balsamiq is already so cheap. We use it for our business and every time it renews I just think they could be getting 5-10x what they are. That in turn helps drive a better business and product.
jonwinstanley
Balsamiq is a per month subscrtiption isn't it? Personally, I need a tool like this once per year or sometimes even less. So if Konty was a one off payment of $20-30 I'd be more inclined to purchase.
TuringNYC
I see the company is based in Asia. I highly recommend considering some branding feedback from westerners. The name of the app will raise eyebrows for many.
undefined
febeling
What are the eyebrow raising connotations you have?
esafak
It sounds like cunty (adjective) or cuntie (diminutive). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Obagb7RQeYo
undefined
jnsie
Replace an o with a u
dewey
The submitted url links to this, still works but just fyi:
itslennysfault
It's weird everything after the slash seems to be ignored. You can type anything and it still goes to the home page. funky.
niklauslee
Oops! Is there any way to fix it? I can't find edit button.
patafemma
Well done! Basic functionality feels pretty smooth and polished. One thing that I found myself very quickly missing: being able to snap shapes to each other or to the grid.
wusel
I thought the connecting arrows were bugged at first, then I realized it's a genius implementation. This alone makes me want to use this more than Figjam.
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Something always bothered me: why using "sketch-like hand-drawn pencil" like style for that kind of tools ?
I understand that "wireframing" is some kind of "brainstorming" tool, so it is used with a pencil and a whiteboard in a meeting room and require to draw/erase fast iteratively... so it's the "right" tool for this job...
But as soon as you use a computer instead of a pencil, why not have a "realistic" and "clean" look instead of this kind of quick-and-dirty sketch-like style? It's an honest question
Is it because designers are most used to this style? Is it because it make more clearly appear the essential points (for example: a list) and avoid discussion like "is this text exactly in this color ?"