ProtoShare is a multi-user and multi-project application. Each user has a unique email address and password that are used to sign in to ProtoShare.

There are several different user roles that control access to different areas of the application. Depending on your role, you may be unable to access certain parts of the application. The primary distinction is between Editors (who create prototypes) and Reviewers (who provide feedback).

Your account is divided up into projects. A project is a collection of pages, designs, content, and feedback. It is typically a website prototype, but it can be any collection of content that benefits from real-time collaboration such as a web application or a set of clickable design comps.

Projects provide a single repository for all of your work — including the feedback that helped shape it — so you can eliminate the proliferation of emails and documents that are typically required to capture the information associated with a prototype.

Users and projects are linked together through project membership. That is, each project has a list of users that are members of it, and each user has a list of projects of which they are a member. A project can only be accessed by its members, so you can safely work with multiple clients in one ProtoShare account.

Each project contains a set of pages that are organized in a tree structure. You can create as many (or as few) pages as needed for your prototype.

Each page starts off with a single design, named “Wireframe”. You can create as many additional designs as needed for your prototype. You build a design by adding components to it, and you add interactivity to components using states. You can add additional notes to a design using annotations.

Projects also contain a library of templates, masters and assets. A template is similar to a page design, and you build it in the same way. A template can be applied to any number of designs. A master is similar to a template, but you can add any number of them to a design, just like components. Assets are images, videos and other files that are part of the prototype.

All designs in the project share a single style sheet which can be used to add arbitrary styling through CSS.

Feedback that you collect using ProtoShare is organized into discussion topics. After someone creates a discussion topic, other users add comments to the topic with their thoughts and ideas.

Users and topics are linked together through topic subscription. In general, users will only see topics to which they are subscribed, and only subscribed users will comment on topics.

Now that you’re familiar with what you’ll find in ProtoShare, learn more about where you’ll find it.