Why wireframes belong to the past
David Gonzalez poses an interesting proposition to eliminate low-fidelity wireframes. I disagree.
Low-fidelity wireframing is most important part of my design process. I don’t mean low-fidelity in the sense of Balsamiq Mockups, but rather paper and marker wireframes.
Designers rarely get the design right the first time, second time, and as it is often in my case, the 19th time. For that reason, I want to keep the cost of change as low as possible. Few things are cheaper than low-fidelity wireframes that you can crumple up and resketch quickly.
Once the low-fidelity is good, we get real and don’t typically create high-fidelity wireframes at all.
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Parag Jagdale
(fyi: the title takes you to limedomains.com instead of the article you were trying to link to)
Josh, I agree with you too. At work we have a “UX designer” (in quotes because that’s not her actual position) go directly to html — even skips the prototype part and demands it be done that way. I overhear problem after problem as developers have to go back and forth on functionality after its been coded already! What a waste. The problems could mostly be avoided with simple low-fidelity wireframes, but no one seems to listen.
Geof Harries also skips low-fidelity wireframes: http://subvert.ca/blog/archive/high-fidelity-concepts/
I think some of these developers/designers don’t consider the skill required to get it right the first time. They’ve all been doing it so long that they know all the patterns to pull it off and that is why I think they skip the low-fidelity. It’s their blog, so they blog about their experience — the rest of us can stick with what works for us.
Parag
April 3, 2010
Josh Walsh
@parag thanks for letting me know about the broken URL. It seems the original has gone down, so I routed it to a repost on Konigi.
I think some good designers suffer from an ego problem. In practicality, it’s not possible to get something “perfect” to the users without collecting feedback from them.
Designers with more experience will certainly come closer to getting it right than other, in most cases. But, why glance over such a simple step that provides such great feedback?
Thanks for the comment.
April 4, 2010
Geof Harries
Josh,
I know we don’t go straight to polished concepts purely out of service to our egos. It has everything to do with what’s best for the client and the team.
As Parag mentions, I believe we have enough real-world experience to confidently take this route. We also get feedback on the higher quality visuals sooner than later; I wouldn’t dare move forward without it.
As stated in my blog post, I feel that too much time spent on low fidelity wireframes can negatively impact a project’s momentum, detracting people from the larger goal at hand. In fact, I’d argue you actually get better feedback on high-fidelity concepts rather than rough wireframes (as discussed in my blog post).
April 13, 2010
Josh Walsh
Geof – Thanks for the update. I agree, spending too much time on low-fidelity wireframing can be detrimental as well. However, I would rather err on the side of an error in a quick sketch rather than in a formal prototype.
In the end, it’s about getting feedback quickly and reacting to it. If that works better for you in high-fidelity, that’s great.
April 13, 2010