7 ms·

Think – Fast mobile whiteboarding

159 points by reimertz 11y ago

reimertz 11y ago
These new features are really nice for people like me who really can't draw but still love Paper.
- mwill 11y ago
  Yeah, I wanted a stylus and at the time Pencil was one of the only ones that worked on the iPad I had, so when I got it, I played around in Paper and it's such a slick experience, but wasn't really the kind of app I needed. It is the app I show people who ask about the Pencil though. So I'm stoked to check out the new features.
harperlee 11y ago
It's a shame that this only works on the iPad; it seems awesome.
darkstar999 11y ago
Is it called Think or Paper? I'm confused.
- wmorein 11y ago
  Paper is the app. Think Kit is the new set of tools for whiteboarding.
  - pimlottc 11y ago
    It is confusing that there is no clear title on the page. The first appearance of the name "Paper" is in a button label.
    - jkestner 11y ago
      Also that the product on this page, Think Kit, isn't mentioned until the 5th panel, and even then it isn't stated that this is the product. I was also expecting this to be an in-app purchase, but it's free. Makes a little more sense if you start from http://fiftythree.com/paper http://fiftythree.com/paper , but this style of web design is beautiful and frustrating and overbranded for the product's simplicity (Paper and Think Kit and Innovation Engine). I use Paper a lot, btw, and expect to use the new tools as well - just as I was straying, trying out alternatives that have guided drawing and layers. (Paper still doesn't have layers.)
    - wmorein 11y ago
      Totally fair feedback. We'll work on it.
lucaspottersky 11y ago
I wish there was something like this that could help me with mockups and UML diagrams.
- currywurst 11y ago
  For UML, have you tried PlantUML? It's a brilliant little text-to-UML converter. Eg. Sequence Diagram (http://plantuml.sourceforge.net/sequence.html http://plantuml.sourceforge.net/sequence.html)
desireco42 11y ago
It's a shame they don't know how to make Android app. Galaxy Note is way better tablet for drawing then Ipad ever was. I have ipad but I use note all the time. It lacks good apps like this one but it has a really good stylus.
- tdkl 11y ago
  Don't know or don't want to invest into such a fragmented platform ?
  - dmix 11y ago
    Fragmented? In what way? Most people don't know that each year one single Android device typically sells 10x more than any other one. For ex: Samsung S4 sold more than the next 2nd,3rd,4th, etc rank devices combined. In addition, the screen sizes are almost all very similar these days. I don't know of a single Android designer or dev who has issues with that. As the UIs scale pretty gracefully. Pretty much the same way web designers adopted responsive design, mobile designers know to expect the UIs to scale/shrink. Even Apple devices have similar size disparity: typical medium-sized phones, phablet, tablet sizes. And now a totally new watch UI. The OS versioning disparity on Android is also becoming less of an issue on Android as devices have moved on to 4.0+. As the changes to frameworks are less drastic between 4.0 vs 5.0. Programming is much more predictable than it was say with 2.3 vs 4.0 for example.
- Trufa 11y ago
  Related to that, I got really frustrated with the site, I went through all the site (though I didn't watch the video), I read it all, watched the animations, all the way down to the button, where they casually (by ommision) inform me that it's only for ipad, not even a coming soon, nothing, great! I'm not saying build it for every device, but at least try not to totally frustrate me.
- barbs 11y ago
  > Galaxy Note is way better tablet for drawing then Ipad ever was. In what way?
rsinger9 11y ago
I strongly recommend GoodNotes for this use case. They do a better job than paper at all the "think" tasks like lassoing objects, handwriting in a zoom window, highlighting, etc. http://www.goodnotesapp.com http://www.goodnotesapp.com (I'm not the maker, just a really big fan)
caseyf7 11y ago
Can anyone comment on Paper's pencil stylus? I've heard people say the Jot Script is the best - I wonder if that will work with this app or if you have to use the Paper stylus.
- lambdaelite 11y ago
  I bought a walnut one when they first came out. I like the shape: it feels good in the hand just like a carpenter's pencil. The tip is pretty squishy and so isn't useful for precision work, and it wears quickly. I use it a couple of times a week and maybe charge it once a month. The specs say it's pressure sensitive, but I wouldn't know it by how it performs. Best features are probably the eraser function and that it enables palm rejection. The walnut has held up well, but I don't think it's worth a price premium. I think it's a nice fit for the Paper app. If you like the app, you might like the stylus. I find that I like using the app with the stylus more than I do with my fingers. If you're planning to use it with other apps, the Pencil may not be the best choice.
jweir 11y ago
I hope this moves into a collaborative space. A whiteboard would have a URL that could be "read only." Other users of the app could collaborate and edit. I am almost never in the same room as clients. `vagrant --share` is a tool(ala very different) that gets this so right.
- ryearsley 11y ago
  We've been working on Collusion for a while now, which might do what you're talking about: shared collaborative white boarding (with a really big space - from a URL, ... with pen support, good for tablets, phones etc. We're testing so feel free to grab an account gratis - constructive feedback welcome: heres an example project https://col.lu/PSnZMIH https://col.lu/PSnZMIH and if you want an account to mess with: https://collusionapp.com https://collusionapp.com
lasermike026 11y ago
$50 for a stylist? I just can't do it.
- andor 11y ago
  It seems to be an active stylus with a pressure sensor.
  - fnt20481 11y ago
    It's a rubber stylus, which as a side effect allows you to use touch area detection to simulate pressure detection, since the rubber squashes, and thus produces a larger touch radius with more pressure.
  - eludwig 11y ago
    I don't think this is actually true. The software supports a very rudimentary type of "pressure sensitivity" that (i think) is based on the capacitive area of the rubber tip. Maybe this can still be considered "active?" Perhaps. It is my understanding that the ability to determine the size of a touch (a radius?) is a system-wide thing that was added for iOS 8. In practice, there is a huge difference between a true pressure sensitive stylus, i.e. a wacom stylus, with, say 1024 real levels of sensitivity, versus this more kludgy solution. The Wacom solution is far closer to real media performance. Paper, when used with Pencil seems to support 2 size variables. The first (mentioned above) is based on the new iOS 8 size of the rubber tip deal. The second size variant is based on the velocity that you use to draw your line. The faster you draw, the fatter the line gets. Amusingly, this is somewhat backwards of the way a real artist would use a brush loaded with, say, India ink (like an inker would use). In that scenario, the faster you move your brush, the thinner your line is (generally -- artists can vary this greatly with practice and technique) Anyway, this Paper and Pencil deal has vastly improved since the first version. The tracking, the connection to the Pencil -- all have improved dramatically. Highly recommended for iPad artists and non-artists. One thing to note is that a newer iPad will be much better at tracking than an older one (obviously!).
    - lambdaelite 11y ago
duaneb 11y ago
No android app, no sale.
sharpercoder 11y ago
What value does this add versus MS Paint? I watched the video but could not answer this question.
alttab 11y ago
Seems like an over-glorified tablet drawing app. The flowery language and music in the video about incredible insights and innovating data design is a bunch of puffery if you ask me. What is the innovation here besides a neat picture app for the iPad?
- makmanalp 11y ago
  Yeha the puffery is ridiculous, it seems everything must be world changing these days to sell. However the tool itself looks awesome, seems like they nailed down the interaction perfectly. I can list a million crappy diagramming apps that are unnatural and annoying enough that it's just easier to draw on paper.
  - dmix 11y ago
    > it seems everything must be world changing these days to sell The TV show Silicon Valley has done a good job of satirizing this religion-style promotion of products in the tech scene.
    - amelius 11y ago
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOXQo7nURs0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOXQo7nURs0
gred 11y ago
I read the title as "fast mobile waterboarding" during my first quick scan of the main page. I was very confused there for a second.
- andor 11y ago
  Same for me, seriously.
jgv 11y ago
That video was tremendously pompous. Everyone spoke so much but said so little.
- adrianbg 11y ago
  Should be called "Talk". Looks like a nice product though.
jgv 11y ago
That video was tremendously pompous. Everyone spoke so much but said so little.
raisedbyninjas 11y ago
That lag is terrible.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
thirdsun 11y ago
This looks interesting - I always wanted to use Paper for wireframes, sketches and mockups. This might come closer to that idea. However the biggest problem I still have with Paper is the fact that its canvas is always definitive and limited in dimension - even with the regional zoom option complex sketches will become crowded and busy. I'd love to have a close to infinite zoom out/in (especially out) option, thereby rendering the canvas practically borderless and as big as I want.
mceoin 11y ago
I truly don't understand the snarkiness of the posts here. FiftyThree have created a beautiful, useful app, and kept things clean and simple. Who cares if they're promoting it with a video as polished as the product? (The video itself obviously strikes at thematic concerns of buyers and typical use cases for designers, so while it's lost on you I suspect they know exactly what they're doing) Some context: I spent years working in graphic facilitation and working closely with clients creating mockups in real-time, both on paper and on whiteboards. The "speed-of-thought" attribute being referred to in the video is critical, because the conversation will move with or without you. Apps like this are exactly what I wish I had at the time, so I for one am excited to see this launch.
- andyl 11y ago
  I agree. Paper is wonderful and this new whiteboard app looks fantastic. IMHO the work of 53 is as good as it gets. Yeah the video seems overblown - but try the products they are great.
bertomartin 11y ago
Nothing beats working with a nice energel pen (http://www.amazon.com/Pentel-EnerGel-Millimeter-Assorted-BL77BP6M/dp/B0012G9VNS http://www.amazon.com/Pentel-EnerGel-Millimeter-Assorted-BL7...) and simple notebooks from muji (http://www.muji.us/store/stationery/notebooks.html http://www.muji.us/store/stationery/notebooks.html)
bambax 11y ago
I read the title as "fast mobile waterboarding" and was very intrigued...
fnt20481 11y ago
Suspect customers are not actually the target of this, and the objective is convincing apple editorial team of design innovation worthy of a front-page app store feature.
ben174 11y ago
I really think they need to focus on removing that awful latency. You can even see it in the video. Microsoft did a study showing just how important it is to get that number down below 10ms. http://phys.org/news/2012-03-microsoft-finger-1ms-touchscreen-video.html http://phys.org/news/2012-03-microsoft-finger-1ms-touchscree...
- white-flame 11y ago
  Not only that, but they have to very carefully keep the rest of their hand from touching the drawing surface as they hold the stylus. An active stylus is far better, letting you rest or brush your palm against the screen without interfering with anything. If they're going to market this as taking care of all the fiddly bits and letting you just be creative, then they should really take care of all the fiddly bits.
  - wmorein 11y ago
    The Pencil stylus is actually active and our palm rejection works quite well.
    - bronson 11y ago
      The Pencil is more like a fat crayon, its latency is absurd, and its palm rejection only sometimes works. After having bought the Pencil and the Pogo, and hating both, I can say that technical drawing on the iPad is simply a poor experience. (Wacom is an example of how to do it well.) For sketching charcoal/crayon-style they're probably fine, but that's not what's being shown in the video. Edit: and calling either of these styluses "pressure sensitive" is to diminish the term to nothingness. Wacom is pressure sensitive, these are barely pressure aware. Erratic pressure response, just not very useful.
- netfire 11y ago
  I agree that reducing the latency would be awesome, but is this something the app developer has any control over, or is this just a restriction imposed by the device hardware (or operating system). In the example video you posted, it appears that Microsoft is using completely different (and likely very expensive) hardware.
delish 11y ago
At least two times in the video, someone said, "Businesses think in rows and columns; but they need to think creatively." Then, the video showed Paper's rows, columns, boxes, tables--not creative stuff! If they were critiquing things-on-a-grid, they should have compared actual made-by-business diagrams with out-of-the-box Paper stuff. Someone in the video mentioned using "advanced statistical algorithms" then the video showed her drawing a squiggly line graph. The video didn't show interop between her algorithms and the graph. Does it interop? I'd be happy if it did.
jordache 11y ago
Ahh so everything worth designing contains a filled area graph?
tagawa 11y ago
It's funny — the images didn't load for me and I read through the text initially not realising it was an app. I thought it was a satirical page promoting paper (as in trees, pulp) and it still made sense.
joelrunyon 11y ago
I really like the idea of Paper. I really hate their pencil utensil. It's super broad & good I guess if you're painting, but if you're doing any sort of detail work - you're screwed.
DatabaseGod 11y ago
I read: fast mobile waterboarding another great startup idea from the fascist states of america

159 points by reimertz 11y ago

reimertz 11y ago

These new features are really nice for people like me who really can't draw but still love Paper.

mwill 11y ago
Yeah, I wanted a stylus and at the time Pencil was one of the only ones that worked on the iPad I had, so when I got it, I played around in Paper and it's such a slick experience, but wasn't really the kind of app I needed. It is the app I show people who ask about the Pencil though. So I'm stoked to check out the new features.

harperlee 11y ago

It's a shame that this only works on the iPad; it seems awesome.

darkstar999 11y ago

Is it called Think or Paper? I'm confused.

wmorein 11y ago
Paper is the app. Think Kit is the new set of tools for whiteboarding.
- pimlottc 11y ago
  It is confusing that there is no clear title on the page. The first appearance of the name "Paper" is in a button label.
  - jkestner 11y ago
    Also that the product on this page, Think Kit, isn't mentioned until the 5th panel, and even then it isn't stated that this is the product. I was also expecting this to be an in-app purchase, but it's free. Makes a little more sense if you start from http://fiftythree.com/paper http://fiftythree.com/paper , but this style of web design is beautiful and frustrating and overbranded for the product's simplicity (Paper and Think Kit and Innovation Engine). I use Paper a lot, btw, and expect to use the new tools as well - just as I was straying, trying out alternatives that have guided drawing and layers. (Paper still doesn't have layers.)
  - wmorein 11y ago
    Totally fair feedback. We'll work on it.

lucaspottersky 11y ago

I wish there was something like this that could help me with mockups and UML diagrams.

currywurst 11y ago
For UML, have you tried PlantUML? It's a brilliant little text-to-UML converter. Eg. Sequence Diagram (http://plantuml.sourceforge.net/sequence.html http://plantuml.sourceforge.net/sequence.html)

desireco42 11y ago

It's a shame they don't know how to make Android app. Galaxy Note is way better tablet for drawing then Ipad ever was. I have ipad but I use note all the time. It lacks good apps like this one but it has a really good stylus.

tdkl 11y ago
Don't know or don't want to invest into such a fragmented platform ?
- dmix 11y ago
  Fragmented? In what way? Most people don't know that each year one single Android device typically sells 10x more than any other one. For ex: Samsung S4 sold more than the next 2nd,3rd,4th, etc rank devices combined. In addition, the screen sizes are almost all very similar these days. I don't know of a single Android designer or dev who has issues with that. As the UIs scale pretty gracefully. Pretty much the same way web designers adopted responsive design, mobile designers know to expect the UIs to scale/shrink. Even Apple devices have similar size disparity: typical medium-sized phones, phablet, tablet sizes. And now a totally new watch UI. The OS versioning disparity on Android is also becoming less of an issue on Android as devices have moved on to 4.0+. As the changes to frameworks are less drastic between 4.0 vs 5.0. Programming is much more predictable than it was say with 2.3 vs 4.0 for example.
Trufa 11y ago
Related to that, I got really frustrated with the site, I went through all the site (though I didn't watch the video), I read it all, watched the animations, all the way down to the button, where they casually (by ommision) inform me that it's only for ipad, not even a coming soon, nothing, great! I'm not saying build it for every device, but at least try not to totally frustrate me.
barbs 11y ago
> Galaxy Note is way better tablet for drawing then Ipad ever was. In what way?

rsinger9 11y ago

I strongly recommend GoodNotes for this use case. They do a better job than paper at all the "think" tasks like lassoing objects, handwriting in a zoom window, highlighting, etc. http://www.goodnotesapp.com http://www.goodnotesapp.com (I'm not the maker, just a really big fan)

caseyf7 11y ago

Can anyone comment on Paper's pencil stylus? I've heard people say the Jot Script is the best - I wonder if that will work with this app or if you have to use the Paper stylus.

lambdaelite 11y ago
I bought a walnut one when they first came out. I like the shape: it feels good in the hand just like a carpenter's pencil. The tip is pretty squishy and so isn't useful for precision work, and it wears quickly. I use it a couple of times a week and maybe charge it once a month. The specs say it's pressure sensitive, but I wouldn't know it by how it performs. Best features are probably the eraser function and that it enables palm rejection. The walnut has held up well, but I don't think it's worth a price premium. I think it's a nice fit for the Paper app. If you like the app, you might like the stylus. I find that I like using the app with the stylus more than I do with my fingers. If you're planning to use it with other apps, the Pencil may not be the best choice.

jweir 11y ago

I hope this moves into a collaborative space. A whiteboard would have a URL that could be "read only." Other users of the app could collaborate and edit. I am almost never in the same room as clients. `vagrant --share` is a tool(ala very different) that gets this so right.

ryearsley 11y ago
We've been working on Collusion for a while now, which might do what you're talking about: shared collaborative white boarding (with a really big space - from a URL, ... with pen support, good for tablets, phones etc. We're testing so feel free to grab an account gratis - constructive feedback welcome: heres an example project https://col.lu/PSnZMIH https://col.lu/PSnZMIH and if you want an account to mess with: https://collusionapp.com https://collusionapp.com

lasermike026 11y ago

$50 for a stylist? I just can't do it.

andor 11y ago
It seems to be an active stylus with a pressure sensor.
- fnt20481 11y ago
  It's a rubber stylus, which as a side effect allows you to use touch area detection to simulate pressure detection, since the rubber squashes, and thus produces a larger touch radius with more pressure.
- eludwig 11y ago
  I don't think this is actually true. The software supports a very rudimentary type of "pressure sensitivity" that (i think) is based on the capacitive area of the rubber tip. Maybe this can still be considered "active?" Perhaps. It is my understanding that the ability to determine the size of a touch (a radius?) is a system-wide thing that was added for iOS 8. In practice, there is a huge difference between a true pressure sensitive stylus, i.e. a wacom stylus, with, say 1024 real levels of sensitivity, versus this more kludgy solution. The Wacom solution is far closer to real media performance. Paper, when used with Pencil seems to support 2 size variables. The first (mentioned above) is based on the new iOS 8 size of the rubber tip deal. The second size variant is based on the velocity that you use to draw your line. The faster you draw, the fatter the line gets. Amusingly, this is somewhat backwards of the way a real artist would use a brush loaded with, say, India ink (like an inker would use). In that scenario, the faster you move your brush, the thinner your line is (generally -- artists can vary this greatly with practice and technique) Anyway, this Paper and Pencil deal has vastly improved since the first version. The tracking, the connection to the Pencil -- all have improved dramatically. Highly recommended for iPad artists and non-artists. One thing to note is that a newer iPad will be much better at tracking than an older one (obviously!).
  - lambdaelite 11y ago

duaneb 11y ago

No android app, no sale.

sharpercoder 11y ago

What value does this add versus MS Paint? I watched the video but could not answer this question.

alttab 11y ago

Seems like an over-glorified tablet drawing app. The flowery language and music in the video about incredible insights and innovating data design is a bunch of puffery if you ask me. What is the innovation here besides a neat picture app for the iPad?

makmanalp 11y ago
Yeha the puffery is ridiculous, it seems everything must be world changing these days to sell. However the tool itself looks awesome, seems like they nailed down the interaction perfectly. I can list a million crappy diagramming apps that are unnatural and annoying enough that it's just easier to draw on paper.
- dmix 11y ago
  > it seems everything must be world changing these days to sell The TV show Silicon Valley has done a good job of satirizing this religion-style promotion of products in the tech scene.
  - amelius 11y ago
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOXQo7nURs0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOXQo7nURs0

gred 11y ago

I read the title as "fast mobile waterboarding" during my first quick scan of the main page. I was very confused there for a second.

andor 11y ago
Same for me, seriously.

jgv 11y ago

That video was tremendously pompous. Everyone spoke so much but said so little.

adrianbg 11y ago
Should be called "Talk". Looks like a nice product though.

jgv 11y ago

That video was tremendously pompous. Everyone spoke so much but said so little.

raisedbyninjas 11y ago

That lag is terrible.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

thirdsun 11y ago

This looks interesting - I always wanted to use Paper for wireframes, sketches and mockups. This might come closer to that idea. However the biggest problem I still have with Paper is the fact that its canvas is always definitive and limited in dimension - even with the regional zoom option complex sketches will become crowded and busy. I'd love to have a close to infinite zoom out/in (especially out) option, thereby rendering the canvas practically borderless and as big as I want.

mceoin 11y ago

I truly don't understand the snarkiness of the posts here. FiftyThree have created a beautiful, useful app, and kept things clean and simple. Who cares if they're promoting it with a video as polished as the product? (The video itself obviously strikes at thematic concerns of buyers and typical use cases for designers, so while it's lost on you I suspect they know exactly what they're doing) Some context: I spent years working in graphic facilitation and working closely with clients creating mockups in real-time, both on paper and on whiteboards. The "speed-of-thought" attribute being referred to in the video is critical, because the conversation will move with or without you. Apps like this are exactly what I wish I had at the time, so I for one am excited to see this launch.

andyl 11y ago
I agree. Paper is wonderful and this new whiteboard app looks fantastic. IMHO the work of 53 is as good as it gets. Yeah the video seems overblown - but try the products they are great.

bertomartin 11y ago

Nothing beats working with a nice energel pen (http://www.amazon.com/Pentel-EnerGel-Millimeter-Assorted-BL77BP6M/dp/B0012G9VNS http://www.amazon.com/Pentel-EnerGel-Millimeter-Assorted-BL7...) and simple notebooks from muji (http://www.muji.us/store/stationery/notebooks.html http://www.muji.us/store/stationery/notebooks.html)

bambax 11y ago

I read the title as "fast mobile waterboarding" and was very intrigued...

fnt20481 11y ago

Suspect customers are not actually the target of this, and the objective is convincing apple editorial team of design innovation worthy of a front-page app store feature.

ben174 11y ago

I really think they need to focus on removing that awful latency. You can even see it in the video. Microsoft did a study showing just how important it is to get that number down below 10ms. http://phys.org/news/2012-03-microsoft-finger-1ms-touchscreen-video.html http://phys.org/news/2012-03-microsoft-finger-1ms-touchscree...

white-flame 11y ago
Not only that, but they have to very carefully keep the rest of their hand from touching the drawing surface as they hold the stylus. An active stylus is far better, letting you rest or brush your palm against the screen without interfering with anything. If they're going to market this as taking care of all the fiddly bits and letting you just be creative, then they should really take care of all the fiddly bits.
- wmorein 11y ago
  The Pencil stylus is actually active and our palm rejection works quite well.
  - bronson 11y ago
    The Pencil is more like a fat crayon, its latency is absurd, and its palm rejection only sometimes works. After having bought the Pencil and the Pogo, and hating both, I can say that technical drawing on the iPad is simply a poor experience. (Wacom is an example of how to do it well.) For sketching charcoal/crayon-style they're probably fine, but that's not what's being shown in the video. Edit: and calling either of these styluses "pressure sensitive" is to diminish the term to nothingness. Wacom is pressure sensitive, these are barely pressure aware. Erratic pressure response, just not very useful.
netfire 11y ago
I agree that reducing the latency would be awesome, but is this something the app developer has any control over, or is this just a restriction imposed by the device hardware (or operating system). In the example video you posted, it appears that Microsoft is using completely different (and likely very expensive) hardware.

delish 11y ago

At least two times in the video, someone said, "Businesses think in rows and columns; but they need to think creatively." Then, the video showed Paper's rows, columns, boxes, tables--not creative stuff! If they were critiquing things-on-a-grid, they should have compared actual made-by-business diagrams with out-of-the-box Paper stuff. Someone in the video mentioned using "advanced statistical algorithms" then the video showed her drawing a squiggly line graph. The video didn't show interop between her algorithms and the graph. Does it interop? I'd be happy if it did.

jordache 11y ago

Ahh so everything worth designing contains a filled area graph?

tagawa 11y ago

It's funny — the images didn't load for me and I read through the text initially not realising it was an app. I thought it was a satirical page promoting paper (as in trees, pulp) and it still made sense.

joelrunyon 11y ago

I really like the idea of Paper. I really hate their pencil utensil. It's super broad & good I guess if you're painting, but if you're doing any sort of detail work - you're screwed.

DatabaseGod 11y ago

I read: fast mobile waterboarding another great startup idea from the fascist states of america