Grupa Nokaut was a highly engineering–driven organization. After successful experiments, the value of design was understood and appreciated, but collaboration remained to be a problem. Design and engineering existed in two silos, and it caused many inefficiencies in the product development process.

To overcome this challenge in 2010, I've started to organize paper prototyping workshops. I invited the entire engineering team, and together with members of my team, we would present results of most recent research and hold an open discussion about their outcome.

After reviewing the results of the research, the entire group was being divided into small interdisciplinary teams and asked to sketch a solution to problems uncovered by the research.

The first iteration of this workshop was only somewhat successful. The team was engaged, but many people struggled with sketching and felt concerned about their ability to express themselves visually.

On a subsequent edition of the workshop instead of blank pieces of paper and pencils team received sticky notes with printed, essential components from our style guide. Instead of sketching the solution, the team was asked to design the interface with sticky notes.

This playful approach turned out to be successful.

Soon after, together with two friends, I decided to turn this positive experience into a product. The problem felt real, and it seemed that we might have a solution. Without any hopes to turn it into a big business we've designed and produced the very first UXPin product – UXPin Paper Prototyping notepad for web design.