Wireframing Best Practices

Explore the best practices to create well-structured and user-centered wireframes

Interaction Design

11 exercises

Wireframes are to digital products what architectural blueprints are to buildings: a vital stage in the design process. They demonstrate how the final product will look like and allow your team to test ideas and fix issues at early stages with minimum expenses. And just like there are best practices for creating blueprints to build a suitable building, there are best practices to follow when creating wireframes.

Jot down a plan and formulate why you need wireframes in the first place and what goals you expect to achieve. It will help you stand by a schedule, so you won't skip important steps and dwell on unnecessary issues. This knowledge empowers your entire team to craft the best possible products that serve your users well.

Don't skip the wireframing stage

Wireframing has a multitude of benefits, regardless of the type of digital product you’re working on. Designing a product without first creating at least a basic wireframe to start from is like trying to take a road trip without a map and only a vague idea of your destination.

Wireframing allows you to estimate and define the scope of the work you’re going to undertake on a product. It can be used as a tool to involve the entire design team in the process. And you can even use wireframes to carry out basic user testing, potentially saving time and money down the road by ensuring your basic concept works for your users.

Set goals for wireframes

Before you begin wireframing, you’ll need to figure out which goals the wireframes will aim to address. User research should be part of this process, to determine what their needs and wants are, how they currently address them, and what problem your product will solve for them.

There are other considerations wireframes can help address, beyond user needs. One of the most important is the business’s requirements for the product. What is the product’s purpose for the business? Is it to sell something? To generate leads? Or something else? Consider here things like budget and resource constraints.

Also, take into account any technical constraints that might be present due to the CMS being used or the platform the product will be used on. Those can have a strong impact on what is and isn’t possible for your product.

Minimize the use of color in wireframes

In general, wireframes should be done in shades of black, white, and gray. Grayscale wireframes imply that the design isn’t finished, making it easier to throw away designs that aren’t working and try again. They also give the same impression to clients and other stakeholders, who will be more willing to give creative feedback if they feel like the wireframe is just an early prototype.

That said, there are instances where color in wireframes can be useful. If you need to show a client that their existing color palette isn’t going to work for the design, need to show contrast in certain situations, or feel like color usage will help get buy-in for your designs, then using color may be the right choice.^[1]

Use basic components in wireframes

In general, you want to use very basic components in your wireframes. You want to express which elements go where, and not much else. Leave the stylistic elements for later mockups and prototypes.

The more stylized your wireframe is, the more it will feel like a finished design, which can hinder useful feedback. By using more basic representations, you’ll find that stakeholders and clients feel free to offer more honest and creative comments about what’s working in the design and what’s not.

Maintain consistency in wireframes

While you don’t want to stylize your wireframes too much, you should keep them consistent. Small things, like using consistent sizes, shapes, and colors for various elements, go a long way toward making your wireframes appear professional.

Use real content in wireframes

Content should drive your design decisions. Content-first design ensures that your UI evolves in a way that supports the content, which in turn better supports your user experience.^[2]

Using real wireframe text offers a few benefits. Seeing real content within your wireframes also makes it easier for stakeholders to give feedback. It makes it easier to figure out actual product requirements around content, particularly around things like space constraints. And it can speed up the entire process of developing the product, since having the content ready early on means fewer content-related delays down the road.^[3]

Use annotations in wireframes

Not everything in a wireframe will be self-explanatory. That’s where annotations become vital to the process. When viewers can’t actively interact with your wireframes to figure out how things work, you’ll need to annotate them to explain.^[4]

The goal of annotations is to make it clear exactly why your wireframe uses particular elements and how those elements will work and support the overall user experience. You want your wireframes to be as straightforward and clear as possible for those viewing them.

Select the right level of wireframe complexity

Wireframes vary a lot in terms of how complex they are. Low fidelity wireframes can be nothing more than a series of labeled boxes scribbled on a sheet of paper. High-fidelity wireframes can be nearly as complex as a finished website or other digital product, complete with some content.

So which is the right level of complexity? The answer, as with virtually any design question, is that it depends.^[5] If the wireframe is going to be used purely for your own iteration process until you find the best design solution, then a low-fidelity, hand-drawn sketch is a great option.

If the wireframe is for a more complex project and/or will be shown to clients or other stakeholders, you may need to create something more complex in order to get your ideas across. For many projects, the right level of complexity will likely fall somewhere in between.

Extend wireframes to prototypes

Wireframes are only one step in the design process. From there, you can go in two basic directions.

For simpler projects, you may go directly from wireframes to creating the actual UI designs. But for more complicated projects, interactive prototypes are likely to be the smartest interim step.

Prototypes give you more of a sense of the actual functionality of your product, which is valuable in making sure that it meets both user needs and business requirements. It’s also an excellent opportunity to work out any kinks or potential roadblocks in your user journey before you start designing the final UI.

Select the right tool

Finding the right tool for creating your wireframes is a very personal decision. There are tons of options out there, from simple pen and paper to complex apps that let you move beyond just wireframing. So how do you decide which one to use?

There are a few things to keep in mind. One is the simplicity of the wireframes created by the program. Some apps make wireframes that appear more like finished UI designs, which can defeat the purpose of wireframing.

The second thing to consider is how easy it is to collaborate with your team and share the wireframes with stakeholders to collect feedback. This should be an easy process even for those who aren’t particularly familiar with the app.

And third is the learning curve. If it takes you days or weeks to learn how to use the program to create a wireframe, you’re wasting time. If you can’t master at least the basic functionality of the program in an hour or two (even if more advanced features take additional time), then you’re better off finding a different solution.

Iterate

The best designs follow an iterative process, creating designs and then improving them after rounds of testing and feedback.^[6] One of the best parts about wireframing is that it’s built for iteration.

Every time you receive feedback from stakeholders, whether they’re users or clients, you have the opportunity to make updates to the wireframe and improve it. These improvements early on are less costly and time-consuming to make than they are once you’re working with more polished UI designs.