Wireframes are great
Wireframing is the pen and paper, brush and canvas, knife and clay of the information architect (or, depending upon your taste in metaphors and with a nod in the direction of Seamus Heaney, the spade and earth).
I really enjoy wireframing. I've even been known to tell people (truthfully) that wireframing is a flow activity for me.
In my time, I've authored wireframes for websites, microsites, e-commerce offerings, interactive and enhanced TV services, Flash applications and wireless services.
Wireframing is not a difficult or complex activity in and of itself (it's just boxes and arrows after all), leading many people to conclude that creating an interactive solution is similarly not difficult or complex.
They're wrong.
The reality is that an IA solution is carefully-judged fusion of formal usability and user-centred design principles, detailed knowledge of the user, their expectations and capabilities, technology and business requirements, creative aspirations, copy and creative messaging.
The quality of a solution being proposed will, needless to say, plummet with the inexperience of the architect.
Wireframing - along with process modelling
- is the information architect's technique of choice for capturing the various elements that need to appear on an interactive service. In my
experience, wireframes are often best presented with detailed annotations explaining what is being proposed.
Such annotations can either be done on the wireframe itself, or via some form of interactive design specification, which is more akin to a design document - and may include graphical interpretations of wireframes - along with detailed descriptions of features, tools or other interactive content items. |
