I love making wireframes. I love the speed and flexibility of using tools like Balsamiq Mockups or Visio to knock up low-fidelity wireframes. You can print them out for paper prototypes, iterate or bin them and start again. It’s fun (for a web designer). But occasionally I find myself struggling to present an idea in a wireframe. This is because I’ve got to the point where the metaphor of the wireframe breaks down.
Wireframes work because we understand how they represent the finished product. They use an simplified, abstracted, visual language that we understand represents the final interface. When we see a wireframe our knowledge and assumptions about web interfaces allow use to fill in the details of how the final design will look and work.
But if you are working on an interface that is new and innovative that shared language isn’t there yet—this is where wireframes falter. If the interactions and features of your interface have not been digested and consumed into the common understanding of web design then you won’t be able to represent them in a wireframe. In fact it’s possible that you won’t be able to imagine them if you are using a wireframing tool that is limited to the current wireframe vocabulary. This is where you need to revert to tools that don’t have those limits: Photoshop, Illustrator and detailed pencil sketches or possibly start writing code and work with the medium itself. Whatever allows you to be free of prior assumptions and create something new.
