What to do instead of wireframes.

The idea of wireframes is perfect, it’s the document you produce and share, but that is misguiding. The best thing you can do is continue to wireframe in some way but share it internally, it’s a record of your thoughts not a spec sheet.

Here are some other options you can consider:

Make a prototype — if you think you have mapped the user experience perfectly, a prototype will prove it. It is also much easier to understand then a bunch of small pages with notes attached to them. Make sure the prototype is high fidelity edchao wrote a great post on Dropbox’s redesign.

High fidelity prototypes capture the essence of what wireframes were built to do, map the users experience.

2. Go back to basic scamps — this means pen and paper, whiteboarding, anything that is quick an easy. As soon as you digitize these you are wasting time, just take a photo on your phone and put it next to your artboard in sketch.

3. Co-design — invite you customers in, try designing with them, draw the site, have conversations, make lots of stickys, look at better products or services. For more on co-design read Jenny Arden Airbnb article.

4. Make technical documents — use your wireframing techniques to produce technical specs with your lead dev, they look similar to wireframes as they show the site/product, each page and flows through the site. The benefit is they document each component and how it is used, how it should function and details such as word counts for headings.

5. Make designframes — if your heart is set on making wireframes, we call that ‘designframes’ when the UX designer sits with the visual designer and they build the wireframes together with the correct fonts, button etc. This is often what happens when the UX and UI designer is the same person.

Conclusion.

I’ve worked with a lot of wireframes, and the key is to take them at face value. They only show what content and interactions might be on the page, however they often miss the larger picture which is the user having a delightful experience with your product or service.

To get the best end results UX designers and visual designers need to work together to solve complex user and business requirements, ultimately to produce better users experiences.

Stop making wireframes and start making better user experiences.