Wireframes
Wireframes are conceptual design: outlining basic navigation, on-page structure and the organisation of content. Placing full focus on the user experience.
What is a wireframing?
Wireframing is a way to design a product, service or application at a structural level. It should be used to lay out content, design complex functionality. The wireframes should be guided by understanding user needs through research and strategy.
Wireframes should be void of colour, using only white space and black lines to indicate form and layout. They should include written content, and very in terms of fidelity and level of detail.
Why use wireframes?
- Clarify website features and functionality
- Display site architecture visually and avoid the abstraction site maps
- Place a focus on website usability
- Support a iterative design process where products can be amended quickly
- Quickly experiment with multiple ideas
- Save valuable project time, with calculated designs that provide guidance for developers
- Quickly turn wireframes into working prototypes
- Provide a solid foundation and guidance for User-interface design and UI design toolkits
Prototyping
Turn design into interactive, clickable prototypes that allows users and stakeholders to explore products before commitment to development.
What is a prototype?
A prototype is simply a simulation of a final product, and they’re common practice throughout all industries as well us web design and User Experience. An interactive mockup and provides the opportunity to test the feasibility and usability of the design before we commit to code. A prototype can be created for websites, apps, widgets tools and any software types that include an interface.
The benefits of prototyping
- Figure out what works and what doesn’t
- Identify problems that otherwise would have been missed
- Properly test and communicate user-interface design before committing to development
- Opportunity to bring users and project stakeholders into the design process
- Design specifically for devices and platforms with responsive and mobile prototypes
- Test with real content and mimic real-life environments
- I can’t reiterate enough, Prototyping is an integral part of the UX design process, if a good user experience is the ultimate goal of your product, then at least some level of prototyping is necessary.