In order to help users adapt to this interface, which is very different to most other applications, the on-boarding experience gives users guidance on what they can do. “You need to use the tool to see how it unfolds,” said Varner. Unlike traditional applications, like word processors, Paper doesn’t presuppose what sort of content you’ll be creating. When you launch paper for the first time you are confronted by an interface that’s best described as sparse. I had a walkthrough of the app with Kurt Varner, Dropbox’s Design Director. This is the type of problem Paper seeks to solve – disparate information from multiple sources with a team of contributors and editors.

Then there are the challenges of version control and making the latest changes visible to everyone promptly. Some lands in email, other bits in fileshares and in various cloud-based storage services. When teams work on a project, the information they need ends up being scattered. Paper is about helping teams of people work together. That’s driven the company to look for new ways to differentiate themselves and to solve different problems. But since they started, many competitors ahem come along and the core service they offered has become commoditised. Dropbox was the early mover when it came to a file sync and share service that was able to make it easy for people to save files on one device and have them available, almost instantly, on another device.

What is dropbox paper used for