Paper

What do you like best?

The simplicity and intuitiveness are top-notch. The ability to quickly and easily switch tools, in particular the ability to quickly throw together charts, tables, and other blocks/shapes into a rough markup of a design makes the creative parts of a planning process flow smoothly. I appreciate the continued focus on adding in features only if the cognitive barrier to using those features stays low.

What do you dislike?

The ability to take a sketch or markup and export it so that the elements remain editable vectors, rather than as a whole rasterized image, is very limiting within a workflow. The level of polish, while pretty good for a brainstorming tool, just doesn't cut it for anything other than whiteboarding. Paper is also fundamentally limited by its platform choice. iOS is great, and while this isn't a review of that platform, even as a daily driver of the platform I recognize that having Paper be truly cross-platform would radically transform its usefulness outside of very particular settings. Get this onto Android and Windows. Even better, get this into a full featured web-app. Give this the multi-user collaboration of Google Drawings, and see what a potential game changer it could be for planners and designers. Add in the ability to select out fully vectorized elements and take those into other applications for refinement or final presentation. Give us the next step.

Recommendations to others considering the product:

At the end of the day, it's an app. If they make it more, and build-in collaboration and platform independence, it could be a wonderful service.

What problems are you solving with the product? What benefits have you realized?

In my work as a designer, Paper gives me a great idea sketchbook that I can use when sitting next to a client or when mirroring to a display. In my work as a project manager, Paper gives me a quick workflow or process whiteboard that I can take with me anywhere.