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.
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Show HN: Konty – A Balsamiq-alternative lo-fi wireframe tool for modern apps
141–150 of 168 posts
Re: Show HN: Konty – A Balsamiq-alternative lo-fi wireframe tool for modern apps
#142"Please download a random binary from a place that doesn't even charge for the binary and seems to be set up yesterday" is... raising my hairs.
I'm sure odds are this actually isn't malware, but - I'd think about how to address that fear.
Re: Show HN: Konty – A Balsamiq-alternative lo-fi wireframe tool for modern apps
#143[flagged]
Re: Show HN: Konty – A Balsamiq-alternative lo-fi wireframe tool for modern apps
#144Something 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…
Exactly. I feel the same way. After lot of research, I settled on Whimsical for doing mockups/wireframes. Good Balance between Simplicity and Power. Only complain is clickable prototyping which is not available. If they add that, I would never leave Whimsical for prototyping.
Re: Show HN: Konty – A Balsamiq-alternative lo-fi wireframe tool for modern apps
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
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."
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.
Devil’s advocate … why shouldn’t this be true? That’s how HyperCard worked, right?
Re: Show HN: Konty – A Balsamiq-alternative lo-fi wireframe tool for modern apps
#146Something 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…
(to be honest, I find this "pencil-like" look a bit like MS Comics for fonts, ugly and unprofessional... so I really don't understand why designer tool use it so much)
For those "downvoting" this comment, please: I wrote it right after my initial post, before any answer, to make my initial post clearer. I certainly should have added this to the main post.
Now that I have all these answers, I understand better. But cant delete or modify this comment. So sadly it's here for eternity :-(
Thanks a lot for your insightfull comments to the original post. Actually, I now think that I will use these method to help getting more feedback from users
Re: Show HN: Konty – A Balsamiq-alternative lo-fi wireframe tool for modern apps
#147This is great. I'm a regular Balsamiq user but prefer the look-and-feel and subtle aesthetic differences in Konty. I'd love some sort of commenting or call-out system on drawings. The "stickies" work well in some cases, but I regularly find that I need to draw attention to certain parts of a design and don't want to have to manually create an arrow with a sticky, or an arrow with text etc.
Also, a small frustration, but when deleting items I reach for "del" on the keyboard, which isn't implemented here ("backspace" works though).
Re: Show HN: Konty – A Balsamiq-alternative lo-fi wireframe tool for modern apps
#148Something 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…
> Something always bothered me: why using "sketch-like hand-drawn pencil" like style for that kind of tools ?
https://napkinlaf.sourceforge.net (one of my favorites from back in the day)
> The Napkin Look & Feel is a pluggable Java look and feel that looks like it was scrawled on a napkin. You can use it to make provisional work actually look provisional, or just for fun. It is released under a BSD-style license
> The idea is to try to develop a look and feel that can be used in Java applications that looks informal and provisional, yet be fully functional for development. Often when people see a GUI mock-up, or a complete GUI without full functionality, they assume that the code behind it is working. While this can be used to sleazy advantage, it can also convince people who ought to know better (like your managers) that you are already done when you have just barely begun, or when only parts are complete. No matter how much you speak to their rational side, the emotional response still says "Done!". Which after a while leads to a later question: "That was done months ago! What are they doing? Playing Quake?" A good article on this is Joel on Software's “The Iceberg Secret, Revealed”.
... and that's the place that I remember where to find this blog post:
Don't make the Demo look Done - https://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2006/...
> When we show a work-in-progress (like an alpha release) to the public, press, a client, or boss... we're setting their expectations. And we can do it one of three ways: dazzle them with a polished mock-up, show them something that matches the reality of the project status, or stress them out by showing almost nothing and asking them to take it "on faith" that you're on track.
> The bottom line: How 'done' something looks should match how 'done' something is.
> Every software developer has experienced this many times in their career. But desktop publishing tools lead to the same headache for tech writers--if you show someone a rough draft that's perfectly fonted and formatted, they see it as more done than you'd like. We need a match between where we are and where others perceive we are.
The infographic in this post ( https://headrush.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/feedbackim... ) is especially important because the how it looks changes what type of feedback you get.
I had a project where I grabbed the stylesheet and header from another similar project while working on it... and spent a week discussing with management about what color blue it should be when the questions I needed answering were "does this page flow make sense?"
Re: Show HN: Konty – A Balsamiq-alternative lo-fi wireframe tool for modern apps
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Devil’s advocate … why shouldn’t this be true? That’s how HyperCard worked, right?
Well, sure. If all you want is buttons.
But if you want reasonable portability of the interface across different devices, and scale, and connection quality there's more to do.
Even just getting an interface that responds cleanly to resizing can be trickier than it looks because what is important changes as aspect and scale change. How you present things may categorically change.
And this doesn't even start on talking about how to get the backend to where it matches the implied functionality of the front end.
Re: Show HN: Konty – A Balsamiq-alternative lo-fi wireframe tool for modern apps
#150This tool is distressingly delicate.
open text. type something. pop up a triangle. modal deadlock.