Guide to Creating Wireframes: The UX Backbone
Whether you are new to experience design or creating user-centric designs for years in this field, you have undoubtedly heard about wireframes. Designing is not a very straight and clean process. It is a time-consuming job and demands us to follow an iterative process to make the work more efficient, smooth and as optimized as the rest of our business.
When one is well with the understanding of interface and different components of it, the user experience is what gives us the challenge to implement these components into a meaningful system and framing a better experience for the users. Wireframing is an essential step of the whole design process and is very helpful for designers because it lets them understand how well they are close to what the user seeks from the product.
But where does wireframe really fit into the product design process? What if you have never done it before and don’t know how to proceed and what steps to take? And what really is the difference between wireframing and sketching? Don’t worry. Lucky for you, I have put down the whole process of wireframing in this article.
Getting Started
Let's try to understand what exactly a wireframe is, what role it plays and why is it even a part of the design process.
A wireframe is a low-fidelity design layout that serves 3 simple purposes:
- It presents all the information that will be displayed on the page.
- It gives an idea of the overall layout of the page and how the different elements will be arranged.
- It conveys the flow of the user in a particular direction and describes the interface setup.
While starting to creating your first wireframe, there are a lot of questions that come up on anyone’s mind. As a starting designer, everyone goes through this and I did too. It might seem completely unnecessary work to create a layout and then, again build the same design in high-fidelity. But believe me, building a wireframe actually reduces your work time rather than increasing it. Creating wireframes will actually help you focus on the problem-solving part of the job without distracting you to colors and type.
If you are preparing designs for a client, it is always the best thing to create wireframes and then, get it verified by the client o whether it fits their requirements before converting them into high-fidelity prototypes. This helps the client and designer both understand what the experience of the user would be more easily. A final selected prototype that satisfies both the designer and the client turns into the actual design that goes into being implemented to an actual web page or application. This is why a wireframe is referred to as the backbone of user experience.
Types of Wireframes
Basically, wireframes are simply elements put together that focus on the problem statement rather on how the user interface is going to represent a particular brand. They can be divided into two types based on their basic characteristics:
- Low-fidelity wireframes
- High-fidelity wireframes
They are exactly what they sound like. Low fidelity wireframe resembles a sketch that you can draw with your hand. These are just black and white representation of the user interface. On the other hand, high fidelity wireframes are created to show the finer details of the user interface.
The easiest way of designing and that which is practiced by most designers is creating low-fidelity wireframes. These wireframes become the first ever product that a designer presents to the client. Once the client is satisfied with the basic design, some designers prefer working on the prototypes, while some move to designing a high-fidelity wireframe first to create a sense of the UI.
Another big confusion that prevails in novice designers is what they should actually put in the wireframes. This problem mainly arises when you are designing a wireframe digitally on any software.
What not to include in wireframes?
Always keep in mind that wireframes are not your final design and your final product might turn out to be a very different product. Wireframes are a part of your testing and brainstorming of ideas to improve your solution to the problem and are only meant for communicating your idea to the client or the developers.
Wireframes serve as a common language between designers, users, stakeholders, and devs
A good wireframe is one which communicates well but is simple. It should only display how elements are laid on the page which can act as a reference to the developers.
While creating any wireframe, keep the following things in mind:
- Keep your colors to grayscale: white, black, and shades of gray in between.
- Use a minimum number of fonts. This not only applies to wireframes but basically to any design. Showing the hierarchy of information through font can be still shown by changing the size of the font and whether it is styled (bold, italics, etc.).
- Avoid any graphics and images. Instead, try using simple rectangles and squares as placeholders with an “X” through the middle of the box to show where the image will be placed. Similarly, to represent a video, you can show a triangular play button on a rectangle.
Pro Tip:
Use original text in your wireframes that are to be displayed on the actual webpage rather than Lorem Ipsum text. This gives an exact idea of how big and small your text fields are going to be and helps you create a better flow.
From wireframes to the finished product
Wireframes are only the first part of the work that your hands are going to work on for the complete design process. Next comes mockups and prototypes, which will make it suitable to be presented on a public platform.
Once you are satisfied with the idea and the flow that your wireframe is providing, you need to create a more detailed mockup that will look very similar to your actual page or application which will help in creating a brand name of the product. Many consider creating prototypes that requires working on every other small detail that shows the smallest of changes and differences in one’s product.
Which tool should you use for your project?
There is not many tools that are specifically made for creating wireframes but that does not mean we can not use them for that purpose.
Low-fidelity design tools are useful for rapid iteration, making them especially advantageous in the early design stages. They help designers form their initial mental model for the overall layout and navigational structure. Most low-fidelity wireframes were considered to be hand-drawn until recent times. But now, many applications are being built just for this purpose of transforming the whole process digitally.
Examples of low-fidelity wireframe tools include InVision Freehand, UI Stencils, and Marvel.
High-fidelity wireframe tools are typically used for mocking up the final versions of a design. However, since they have the largest feature sets of any other category of design tools, they’re very multi-purpose — and one of those purposes includes wireframing.
Examples of high-fidelity wireframe tools include InVision Studio, Adobe XD and Sketch.
I really like Invision Freehand because it provides a really easy way of creating wireframes like just on paper.
Now that you are aware of what wireframes are, why they are important and how to create them, just hop into one of the tools and start creating. If you are a beginning designer, consider creating wireframes on paper. That really helps a lot to improve on how you think just by having the problem statement in front of you.
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