Wireframing Mistakes Every Designer Should Avoid

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Wireframing is probably one of the most critical processes designers must go through while developing a digital product. It visually represents an app or software's interface and UX. A wireframe's purpose is to demonstrate a digital product's functionality and what it might look like. These act like blueprints for apps and software. Moreover, wireframes also help developers create the front-end interface of the product.

Unfortunately, newbie product designers make wireframing mistakes that negatively affect customer experience. To be a highly skillful and successful product and UI/UX designer, you must learn from the best. Therefore, the experts at 10Pearls University have compiled a list of mistakes you should avoid to create successful and impactful wireframes that your clients will love.

1. Using Digital Tools for Creating the Initial Sketch

In the initial stages of brainstorming and wireframing, there's no need to use digital tools to create the interface's initial design. It can slow the overall wireframing process. It's important to properly understand what you want to build. So, instead of using digital tools, grab a piece of paper and pen and start sketching your app's or software's initial wireframe. Keep adding details, design ideas, and annotations on the go. This approach allows you to create multiple designs and compare them to see which variant is the best.

2. Overloading the Design with Details

As a product manager or designer, it's important to provide developers, QA engineers, and reviewers with enough information to help them create the front-end design, add functionalities based on your requirements, and test functions using test management tools. However, adding too many details and elements will only overcomplicate your wireframe and confuse your team. At the ideation stage, it's important to keep things as simple and direct as possible. Create an easily understandable and clean wireframe with specific details. You can always add more details once your design idea gets the nod from the team and stakeholders.

3. Using Lorem Ipsum Text

This is a mistake most product designers make. You can't consider a wireframe or design to be complete without adding any marketing copy to it. Clients hate it when product designers present their front-end designs with placeholder text instead of impactful marketing copy. Without proper content, it'll be difficult for your clients and stakeholders to understand your design idea and layout. Adding Lorem Ipsum text to your design will make your UI look clean and well-organized. But, as soon as you replace it with real marketing copy, you may encounter several wireframing issues like poor text alignment and overflow, which ruins the overall design.

4. Designing Interfaces for Large-Sized Screens First

You should create wireframes for smaller screens before moving on to larger ones. By keeping things as compact as possible, you'll be able to eliminate unnecessary content and design elements in your wireframe and stick to priorities. On the other hand, creating designs for large-sized screens first can make adjusting and adapting your design to smaller screens a lot more difficult. We also recommend using the mobile frame of a real device. For instance, if you're creating an app for IOS devices, we recommend using the mobile frame of iPhone X, as this is the most common screen layout on Apple smartphones. It's much easier to create a design when you have the proper dimensions of the device. The frame will also prevent you from adding unnecessary elements and creating confusing interfaces.

5. Not Including Enough Annotations

Wireframes are static web designs, and developers/designers use their imagination to understand how the design might look and function. Miscommunication between product designers and team members can create serious wireframing issues that can ruin the entire project. While we don't recommend overloading your wireframe with details, you should add accurate annotations to help your team and reviewers understand your design ideas. If you're not explaining the logic and philosophy of your design using clear annotations, you won't be able to get accurate and useful feedback.

6. Only Focusing on Visual Elements

Overloading your software design with visual elements is not the purpose of wireframing. The main objective of this process is to integrate the required functions using the least possible artifacts. Reviewers and stakeholders prefer a clean and easily navigable design. The quantity of visual elements in wireframing doesn't matter, but the relationship between them does. Functionality should always be prioritized over style. This is why wireframes normally consist of black and white frames without styling, graphics, animations, or colors. However, you may use colors to highlight certain design elements and areas in your wireframe.

7. Starting with High-Fidelity Wireframes

Before talking about this error, let's discuss what low-fidelity and high-fidelity wireframes are.

Low-fidelity wireframes are those initial sketches designers create on a piece of paper or using a digital design tool to make their ideas more tangible and presentable. These wireframes don't have any colors, graphics, or elements. They're focused on presenting the main design ideas to the stakeholders, reviewers, or team members.

On the other hand, high-fidelity wireframes are created mostly using advanced digital tools because they include branding elements, real marketing copy, images, colors, animations, and typefaces. Even if your wireframe contains placeholder text, it cannot be classified as high-fidelity.

Designers often start the wireframing process by jumping straight to the high-fidelity design. They do look better than low-fidelity designs. However, creating such wireframes takes a lot of time and can unnecessarily increase your project's duration. Also, if your design idea gets rejected, you'll have to start all over again. Hence, it's better to start with low-fidelity wireframes and create a high-fidelity wireframe once your design ideas are approved.

8. Wireframing Every Page

Wireframing is a very demanding and time-consuming process in a custom software development project. But this process can get even more difficult if you create wireframes for every page of your app or software. Your wireframe has to be efficient. This is why there's no need to create wireframes for every page. You just need to work on core screens of your software that are critical for the flow of your overall UI/UX design. You can exclude screens that won't be vital to the main software flow and can incorporate them in later stages of development. If there are multiple variants of a screen, it's better to create a fixed design template instead.

9. Sharing Unfinished Designs with Stakeholders/Clients

You should implement efficient strategies and meet deadlines your team, stakeholders, or clients set. Designers create multiple incomplete wireframes and sketches throughout the design process. They keep experimenting with their ideas by creating multiple rough low-fidelity wireframes and comparing them. However, sharing unfinished and rough wireframes with your client might be offensive and detrimental. To avoid miscommunication and confusion, keep clients in the loop throughout the design process and submit clear and finalized wireframe sketches with them. Make sure that your design strategy is clear to them and incorporate every feedback they provide during the process. 

10. Not Focusing on the Information Architecture

The information architecture suggests how to structure every page of your software and how to present content to the user for maximum impact. It dictates what features you should add, where to place content, and how to create a design that ensures great user experience and interaction. You can use various custom software development and wireframing tools. But, without strictly following the information architecture, your digital product won't impact your target audience, and you'll end up having multiple unnecessary iterations between your wireframe's design elements and content layout.

Avoiding these mistakes will help you create clean, adequately descriptive, and effective wireframes for your clients. If you want to learn the art of wireframing, UI/UX design, and front-end development, sign up on 10Pearls University's website today! Access hundreds of courses and learn in-demand tech skills for free!

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