Wireframes

The Guide to Wireframing

Advantages and Disadvantages

Wireframes should be used by anyone, but typically created by designers or developers. Wireframes work as a blueprint for design, providing structure, content, informational hierarchy, functionality, and behavior without developing the complete product. Sketching wireframes gives the benefits of speed and simplicity as anyone at just about anytime can draw out a simplistic wireframe. Sketching a wireframe also allows for one to easily show diffrence in not only pages, but in pop-ups or extentions. However sketching will look much less professional and may struggle to convey an idea to a team of designers. Wireframing software takes more time than sketching but provides a much cleaner and sofisticated design. Using software rather than sketching does require one to be at a computer rather than anywhere with a writing utensil. The best side to wireframing software is it capabilty to quickly and easily convey the idea(s) to a team.


Wireframing my own webpage for the semester project, sketching would work better than using wireframing software for a few reasons. One, as I am the only one working on the project, the idea does not need to be fully understood by others to the detail I need to understand it. Two, skecthing will allow me to quickly and easily test or update the project whenever I can. And three, my webpage will have few pages, but many interactive drop-downs and "pop-ups" for lack of a better term that would be more easily portrayed through sketching.