Packaging Prototypes

Tools
#1

I’m looking for some way to package and send prototypes for offline use. The work I do has a lot of animations, so clickable pdfs aren’t adequate.

I’m in Shanghai, and every normal wireframe/prototype hosting platform is blocked or throttled so badly as to be unusable.

  • Sketch Cloud is ok with a vpn as long as there aren’t any large images (there usually are) and can’t do animations. (With gov’t clients, we often can’t suggest using a vpn.)
  • InVision hosting is too slow, with an without a vpn. Animations freeze and links get dropped too often.
  • I can only make videos in Flinto.
  • Adobe XD can’t upload through the firewall, and I can’t even test if hosted prototypes work.
  • It looks like Framer X still has no sharing/hosting function.
  • Figma and Principle export iOS applets, and Figma has a mobile app, but not all our clients have macs, and I do touchscreens so mobile display is going to be way too small.

I actually did a serious survey of popular software as part of my unofficial ‘CTO’ duties.

Idealy, what I’d love is something like Flash used to do where you could export a Projector file, and anyone could open it locally with all images and scripts embedded.

Does anything like that exist for clickable animated prototypes?

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#2

Axure handles basic animation and you can create a local export to HTML.

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#3

Yeah, I used to use Axure. But I promise that regional secretaries of Chinese provinces aren’t going to follow directions and unzip a zip file so the image links will work. They’ll just text my boss at 11pm that “it doesn’t work”, and he’ll immediately text me.

I know there may not currently be the option that I’m looking for, but it’s worth asking. Sometimes, I really miss Flash. :smirk:

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#4

@ref_design
InVision allows you to export a zip folder with all the assets in it.
This makes extremely easy to share the prototype when you are offline

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#5

I got really excited but couldn’t find the feature. I checked with InVision Support and got this:

While there currently isn’t any way to export prototypes that were created in InVision Studio, this is a potential feature that our Product team is tracking.

You can only download projects submitted through the webapp, so created in Sketch or PS. That’ll be fine if Sketch gets up to the level of animation that we require.

Thank you, though.

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#6

I haven’t used Mitya but heard positive reviews. They have animations and declare export to HTML. If it does what they say, it should solve your problem.

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#8

@ref_design Have you found a solution? Would be great if there were a software meeting your requirements.

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#9

I would second Axure, we upload to axureshare, and share the generated URL and password with stakeholders.

If Axureshare is blocked, could you do the export html and host it yourself and send them a URL to your hosted version?

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