Wireframe: The Beginner’s Guide

What Is A Wireframe?

For the noobs out there, let’s start with the obvious question: What is a Wireframe? Similar to a blueprint or layout of an architectural design, a wireframe is a two-dimensional skeletal outline of an application or a website.

This design provides a clear overview of the page structure, information architecture, user flow, layout, functionality, and other parameters such as the behaviour of the page elements. It usually represents the initial concept of the product, wherein the colour combination, graphics, and other page elements are kept to a minimum.

UI designers can manually or digitally build a wireframe depending upon how much detail is needed. It is the most common practice used by UX designers and web experts. This process helps all the stakeholders to gather and place all the necessary information and page elements before the developers build the interface with the code.

That’s all about Wireframe. Wondering when it takes place and its purpose? In this article, we will walk you through everything you should know about Wireframe.

When Does Wireframe Take Place?

The wireframing process takes place during the initial phase of project development. During this phase, UI designers gather as much information as they can to understand the scope of the project. They collaborate on ideas and identify the specific business requirements.

Gathering valuable insights from the clients, designers reach the next checkpoint of preparing a prototype or a mock up which is a more detailed iteration.

This takes us to why it is needed. Now, let’s understand the purpose of Wireframe.

Purpose Of Wireframe

Keeps The Content User-Focused

Wireframes facilitate feedback from the clients and users and instigate conversations with stakeholders. A wireframe generates ideas between the designers so that they can collaborate effectively. Apart from that, it also helps in conducting user testing in the early stages of product development. This allows the UI designers to work on the feedback and identify the pain points that help establish and develop the concept.

Using the popular pseudo-Latin text ‘Lorem Ipsum’, designers can prompt the users with questions like ‘what do you expect here?’

These insights help the UI designers to understand the basic requirements of the users and create easy-to-use products.

Defines Features Of The Website

When communicating your ideas to clients, they might not have the technical lexicon to understand the terms like hero image, breadcrumbs or call to action. A wireframe helps you to communicate specific page elements to your clients.

On top of that, it also helps in defining the exact amount of space required for each feature. It connects the website architecture to the visual design and clarifies the functionality of the webpage.

Wireframes align the required features and help in visualizing how they will work together. These features may prompt you to decide which ones to remove or add some new ones when needed.

Saves Time & Money

Best part? Wireframes are inexpensive and are easy to create. Manually, you can create a wireframe on a piece of paper without spending a single penny. With certain tools, you can build wireframes in a short time.

By exposing the page layout, pain points and flaws can be identified and rectified without any significant expenditure of time and money. Removing the anomalies in the very beginning is very easy.

Contents Of A Wireframe

The contents of a wireframe depend on different types of wireframes. Elements of a wireframe typically include the following

• Headers
• Share buttons
• Search boxes
• Logos
• Navigation maps
• Pseudo-Latin text ‘Lorem Ipsum’
• Pixel-specific layouts
• Relevant written text

Different types of wireframes have different contents and elements.

Created in greyscale, the UI designers often use lighter shades of grey to represent the lighter colors and darker shades to represent the borders or outlines.

You might have come across the term ‘high fidelity wireframe’ in the above point. What is a high-fidelity wireframe? How many types of wireframes are there?

Let there be light!

Types Of Wireframes

There are three main types of wireframes and the only difference between them is the amount of detail they contain. Let’s take a closer look at these three types of wireframes.

Low-Fidelity Wireframes

These are the visual representations of the webpage and serve as the starting point of the design. Low-fidelity wireframes are rough and created without any sense of scale, grid, pixel accuracy and contain only a few elements.

A low-fidelity wireframe includes simple images, shapes, blocks and filter text for headers or labels.

Such a wireframe helps in deciding on the navigation layout and mapping the user flow. Built quickly, these are the best option when you are about to have a F2F meeting with your client and want to come up with a last-minute design.

Mid-Fidelity Wireframes

A mid-fidelity wireframe is the most commonly used of all. It includes more accurate representations of layouts and page elements. While these lack distractions such as typography and imagery, you can always see more details with specific components.

In mid-fidelity wireframes, different text weights are used to separate the body of the content from headings. Designers use different shades of black and white to highlight the visuals of components.

High-Fidelity Wireframes

High-fidelity wireframes include pixel-specific layouts and relevant written content with actual featured images. The added details make these wireframes ideal for documenting menu systems, interactive maps and engaging components. These are often saved for different stages of the product development life cycle.

Conclusion

So here is everything you need to know about Wireframing. Wireframe enables you to transform the idea of your client into a good starting point. Move forward with the confidence in your designs that your clients will love.

Apart from that, Wireframes help you save tons of money and development in the long run. Not investing in Wireframe design services might incur huge losses to your business. To learn how UI/UX, wireframe, and our product can help you gain traction in the market, contact DRC Systems today.