Interesting and Novel approach
My primary use case for this is with students to create their prototypes, share for feedback and then publish it if they wish, especially if they have a sponsor. previously I used a combination of apps to do this and it was time-consuming and hard to manage to say the least. My first impressions are that Hypi solves these problems.
Upon logging in, one is presented with the option of creating a project. Within this, there are three options - Mood, Stories, and Designer. I have used the designer option mostly but a quick look at Mood and Stories seems to suggest that it is a storyboarding and persona-generation tool with the ability to add videos, links, images and text. If this is the case then it will definitely replace Miro for me.
The designer itself is robust and is made up of widgets. When you add a widget to the canvas you can see the structure ina screen below, similar to a mindmap in text form. The next section is logic where you apply your properties to what a button should do or what happens when you click here. This is followed by the data section. On the right hand side are the properties for each of the widgets which can be customised as preferred.
Like I mentioned, my first impressions are that this is a great value product. Of course I haven't published it and wanted to provide some feedback before sharing it with my students.
1) I couldn't find onboarding for stories and moods. is this because it is that simple to use?
2) The onboarding for designer is very clear. However, there is no back option and if I want to revisit a point my only option is to start over again.
3) Will you please consider adding more templates to the 'new page screen'? My understanding is, the canvas holds only one screen at a time. When I click on the plus icon to create a new canvas and a new screen, I am presented with only a few templates or design from scratch option.
4) Is my understanding of Models correct - if I buy Tier 2, I have 10 apps and 15 models per app. That is to say, within each project, I can have 1 main app and 15 variations of it and then publish the final one I want. Is this what it means?
5) Is it possible to rename the screens to make it easier to identify?
Overall, I have barely scratched the surface but I like what I see so far. With sub accounts and unlimited users, it is even more appealing. The Academy (https://discuss.hypi.app/latest) looks pretty good as well. What would make it even more amazing is if you could tailor it to absolute beginners (which my students are) and some video recordings. Pretty please!
Thanks and all the best!
ps: don't forget to incorporate the feedback of this community. It is a game changer, in my experience :))
Courtney_Hypi
May 9, 20241) We've focused more on the app editor itself and in fact, we're releasing "sub-onboarding" in 2 weeks time that'll allow more detailed walk throughs of the various sections of the editor. We'll put some time into adding onboarding for stories and the mood board
2) Unfortunately it's a current limitation. We do plan to address it
3) Yes, an extremely common request. We're working on some video examples right now and will look at look at adding more templates after the videos are done. We're aiming to publish the videos some time next week
4) hmmm, not - i'll add this to the FAQ I'm working on. A model is how you store data in the app. For example there are some built in models like Account that do not count towards the model limit. If you want to store your own data then you need to create your own models. Think of a model as a database table if you're familiar. If not then maybe imagine a single sheet in a spread sheet, each column is a field name you choose to store some data so you could have one sheet for storing a list of Accounts and their properties and another sheet for storing orders etc
5) Yes, it is possible. In the top right of the properties panel it has the name of the selected widget whether this is a screen, button or any other widget. You can rename that widget there. We'll change the colour contrast here to make it more obvious that this is editable
We're working on the videos now, it is probably the top request among the questions here :)