Suppose you are a newbie UX designer or just say you have been around in this game for years now. You have always been hearing about wireframes, creating them and providing them to your developers or you might be executing them on your own. Wireframes are very much important for every website, landing page or even an App.
What is a Wireframe?
A wireframe is the blueprint of your digital product—the first visual step in bringing your idea to life. It maps out the structure, layout, and core elements of your app or website before any design or development begins, helping to set a strong foundation.
Our team at Felix-ITs has extensive hands-on experience with wireframing, and we are delighted to offer expert advice to make the process work and show you how simple it is. Wireframing is not an elaborate technological task; rather, it is a concoction of imagination, logic, and a user-driven approach.
Let’s get wireframing!
You have seen a blueprint of a building or a construction project. A wireframe is meant to describe and specify the details to designers, developers and copywriters. A wireframe will give an overview of the project to these guys.
Wireframe is a medium between your first pen-and-paper sketch and first prototype. A wireframe will help you plan the layout and interaction patterns of your users without any unnecessary details like colour and copies. The proposed user journey is detailed in the wireframe and it won’t need any colours, shades and fancy menus.
Additional Info – Why User Research is Crucial for Successful UI/UX Design
The Best Tools for Wireframing
- Figma: Ideal for collaborative tasks; allows real-time editing and team collaboration to facilitate collective wireframing.
- Sketch: Well-loved among Mac users, its myriad of plugins and ease of use enable streamlined design workflows.
- Adobe XD: The single workspace for wireframing, prototyping, and sharing an all-in-one tool for designers planning to integrate multiple design phases into a single phase of work.
- Balsamiq: Provides an excellent low-fidelity sketch-like tool that is great for quickly sketching ideas and looking at the overall arrangement instead of the detailed design.
How to Create Your First Wireframe?
So, we talked a lot about wireframes, now let’s see how you can build your wireframe:
Step 1. Listing down the things you need
So, you are creating a mobile design. App design is very easy to sound, but is it? It might sound easy because of all our apps and websites are very easy to use and navigate right?
You are wrong. Sorry for being so straightforward though. You will realise it while designing your wireframe.
Forget about aesthetics, this is not the first step to look after what colours you need to out or which images are to be placed. You need to list down all the things which you need to see in the final design.
For example, decide on things like, does your design need a search bar? A chatbot? Links to social media? Whatever the things maybe, list down all the important things you need for your final design. This will be your first design.
If you have all the things in order, it will be a whole lot easier for you to start designing.
Step 2. Focus on User Experience and Not the Design
You might say, we talked about design and now you are telling me not to focus on design.
A design might be the first thing your users will see on your page but they will also see some major things in your page. Those things could be 1. What that page is supposed to do? 2. Where will the small icons lead to? 3. What every button is meant to be?
Your users must feel comfortable and easy to understand all these and many things when they open the page.
Step 3. Get an inspiration
Don’t take a pen and paper or open any tool to just get going.
There are other websites and apps which will provide you with UI/UX guides with more ease. You can start by referring to them and start your own. Well, this might be hard but you can get inspiration from these platforms.
Step 4. Build
The wait is over. No additional anticipation, no more talking metaphors concerning maps and journeys or experience. Now it’s time to wire that frame!
There are more ways to wireframe:
You can do the particular wireframing but you want, either physically or online. You can draw it on a large whiteboard as they show in movies or plough through 12 packs of notes. Any surface you’ll draw on is used to sketch out your UX masterpiece.
Then we’ll say that there’s a drawback to coming up with your plan physically: It’s arduous to prototype with pen and paper.
But there’s also an upside: Collaboration with your coworkers is as simple as tossing them a pen.
Bonus Read – Level Up Your UI/UX Skills: AI-Focused Online Courses for Designers
How to Make Your Wireframe Good: Three Key Principles
User-Centric Layout: Design the elements for the intuition users will feel while navigating through the site line with the user journey while prioritizing the elements based on user needs and anticipated behavior. Put relevant features either on the home page or within the first two clicks.
Consistency and Hierarchy: Providing the same space, alignment, and style guidance, straightens users’ attention toward a logical flow. A visual hierarchy can be established by using size and placement to show importance, helping users to seamlessly navigate the wireframe and understand the priorities of content. This will pave the way for a smooth transition to a high-fidelity design.
Clarity and Simplicity: The wireframe should focus on clarity. Avoid complexity in layout details and design aspects; nevertheless, it should properly call stakeholders’ attention toward the bare core of the wireframe, such as navigation, content layout, and functions. No colors or quantitative attributes along with their layout arrangement highlight the difference between the layout and the visual effect the designer has created.
These principles will help ensure your wireframe serves as a solid foundation for a user-friendly and well-structured final product.
Conclusion
Now that you have an idea about your app or webpage, we don’t need to tell you more about what icons you need to place or what buttons you need to configure in your app.
Create a prototype of your idea or wireframe with online tools which we will discuss in our next blog and then you can test and try if your wireframe is useful to your users. This way you know what primary things are needed before you start creating your wireframe.
Prototypes are the most functional part of your design and thus, wireframes are just drawings for the users. Don’t present your wireframes to them.
