Look Back at Prott in 2017 πŸ’­ ✨

Reflections from the Engineering Team

Margaret Iuchi-12 / 19 / 2017-News

Just as the πŸŒΈπŸŽ‹seasonsπŸ‚β„οΈ change here Japan, this year was filled with many changes including seeing the team evolve and welcoming new faces.

Throughout the year, we had a number of releases, from the Prott Viewer for iOS, to the Timed Transition Feature, and adding support for the iPhone X to name a few. In this year's look back blog, we'd like to take a different approach by introducing you to some of our hardworking engineers behind Prott and have them share their story.

It's All About Creating a Seamless Experience for iOS Engineer, Koyachi-san πŸ‘Œ

If you're an early riser like Koyachi-san, you can catch him out the door and on the first train headed to Shibuya at 6am while the rest of the team is still fast asleep. He fully maximizes not only the quiet time but having the office all to himself by getting a head start coding the latest project.😼✨

One of the first projects that Koyachi-san worked on was the release of the Prott Viewer for iOS. πŸ’ͺ When asked if there were any areas during development that he found challenging, he said it was after the user installed the Viewer app. The challenge was finding a seamless way to prompt the app to take the user directly to viewing the prototype, without directing them back to the initial prototype URL.

The solution? After many early mornings at the office, plugging away, he designed a way for the Viewer app to direct the user straight to the prototype once it was installed. This meant the user could begin viewing and commenting on the prototype, providing an effortless experience.

It's All in the Micro Details for Android Engineer, Yossy πŸ”

They say laughter is the best medicine and this holds true for Android Engineer, Yoshitake-san, aka. Yossy (pronounced Yoshi. Yes, that's right, like the fun loving green dinosaur that everyone has come to adore). You can often hear his infectious laughter echoing through the office that you find yourself laughing alongside him.

For Yossy, this year was all about the Comment feature. Since collaboration is a big theme for Prott, making sure the communication and feedback experience is as smooth as possible is key both on Web and Mobile.

Not only did Yossy work on aligning the design of the Prott for Android Comment feature to the Web version, he also focused on making the microinteractions natural and playful. For example, when you tap on a pinned comment, you may have noticed that the pin gently highlights and animates like the ripple effect of a water droplet.

For Prott 2, Yossy will be upping his game by implementing push notifications whenever a user comments on a prototype meaning, you'll be in the know at all times. This means being able to jump in and comment back if you need any clarification, leaving ambiguity a thing of the past. πŸ‘Œ

It's All About Security & Stability for Back-End Engineers, Yahara-san & Shioura-san πŸ”“

When you see Yahara-san and Shioura-san, aka. Urapico-san working side by side, they are like two peas in a pod. πŸ‘―β€β™‚οΈ You can often hear them finishing each others sentences to seeing them come to work both wearing flannel. #unintentional?πŸ˜†

This year, we wanted to highlight the behind-the-scenes work, which this dynamic duo does, to maintain a high performing and secure Prott. One of their biggest efforts was to streamline the maintenance process to free up time for them to focus on feature development and improve the overall product experience. Thanks to their effort on automation, the system can now take the necessary steps to automatically restore itself, in the rare case an issue were to come up.

One of the existing features they worked on this year was the Comment feature. They were able to speed up the loading time of the screens containing multiple comments, giving users quicker access to the comments. This meant less time staring at the screen and more time working on taking prototypes to the next level.

There were countless other stories not only from our engineers, but from our designers, the PM, and the CS team that we wanted to share with you all but we hope to share you more of our stories in the near future!

What's in Store for Prott?

In case you haven't read up on our third anniversary blog post, we gave our readers a sneak peek into what we are working on for Prott 2. The development team is plugging away so stay tuned for more in 2018. πŸ˜‰

Thank You

Lastly, thank you as always, for your continued love and support. ❀️The community that we have at Prott is what makes it so special and makes us excited to come into work every day. We'll continue to work hard to improve Prott to be the best prototyping tool for you. Have a wonderful and safe holiday season and we'll see you next year! πŸŽ‰βœ¨

- Prott Team