Have you fully consider the Designer's side of this? I feel that to be successful and bridge the gaps between those two mental models you also need to onboard the designers so they can help with generating the right type of mockup (or at least the kind that will help a developer using Pagedraw get the closest to a 1 to 1 code export).
The reason why I ask is that I tried importing several semi-complex but not uncommon (structure wise) files and I got an error saying that I should make sure that the file is correctly formed.
That right away is bad UX. If the designers need to reformat or change the behavior of their files, then they need to be part of the user journey. Right now there's nothing of that as far as I can tell.
Pagedraw doesn't impose any organizational requirements on your Sketch files! You're right that requiring certain structures is bad UX; we agree and care deeply about following that principle. The incorrect file formatting error means we don't recognize your upload as a Sketch file at all.
Probably a bug on our side. Could you try emailing the Sketch file to team@pagedraw.io and we'll see if we can debug it?
Cool. I can't really send it because I'll be violating the infosec policy of my company (I was already violating it trying to upload it, lol)...
I feel that eventually, you will need to set a certain standard. Not because is required on your side, but because this is how every designer/developer relationship should work. People just don't know how to do it because there's no standard or methodology.
Think how horrible would be if developers didn't have Git to collaborate... Well, that's basically the state of developer-designer collaboration. I think with this product you guys are in a good position to help solve this problem.
The reason why I ask is that I tried importing several semi-complex but not uncommon (structure wise) files and I got an error saying that I should make sure that the file is correctly formed.
That right away is bad UX. If the designers need to reformat or change the behavior of their files, then they need to be part of the user journey. Right now there's nothing of that as far as I can tell.