Mary Shaw

Wireframes are great for visual communication, solving design problems and building team consensus. People will understand what you’re trying to say better and faster with pictures. It helps them see how things are connected, whether or not something is missing and how changes to one thing may impact something else. An agency creative director once asked me what I found compelling about working in plain old black and white. With all due respect, I told her that what I love most about wireframes is they help teams focus clearly on content and functionality. Just the facts, ma’am. No graphic design – just placeholders for navigation, content, and notes on system behavior. Plus despite what she may think, it’s a very creative exercise.

From a timing and cost perspective, wireframes help designers work through a variety of site layouts before they commit a full team of resources to the project. This can save clients big bucks. Just like you wouldn’t build or renovate a house without a clear blueprint, you shouldn’t build or redesign a web site or web application without wireframes. But wireframes are only one step in a larger process of first understanding business goals, user needs and site requirements. Before you even touch a wireframe you need a clear understanding of what it is you want to build. And that’s what sketching is for.

In Information Architecture: Blueprints for the Web, Christina Wodtke and Austin Govella state “Information Architecture is good thinking written down”. More specifically, wireframes represent good team thinking written down. They simply cannot be done in a vacuum. So before you start cranking them out in your favorite software program, grab your sketchbook and get everyone involved in the project together, either on the phone or in person. People think visually and respond much faster to visual images. Capturing good team thinking into a visual diagram takes skill, patience and perseverance. The trick is to nail the requirements early on from all project stakeholders.