Wireframing is the process of making a plan or draft in a sense of what your website or app’s structure will look like and partially how it will function. It really helps in communicating how the website/app’s setup will be like more or less and prepares UX designers or programmers for what they will need to recreate such as buttons, columns, sliders, etc. included in the website/app’s wireframe.

THE TWO PHASES OF WIREFRAMING

The wireframing process is split up into two distinct phases: the ideation phase and the validation phase.

1. IDEATION PHASE

The ideation phase focuses on how your specific product or service can solve the customer’s problems or meet their needs. In order to get started in this phase, you must form as many possibilities and ideas to find the best possible solution; however that does not mean throwing out a bunch of ideas with no sense or strength to them, it means to form as many quality ideas to solve a customer’s problem, meaning quantity and quality.

2. VALIDATION PHASE

While the validation phase takes into account whether your chosen solution to the customer’s problem will be successful or not. Since in many cases during the software development process you may lack the necessary information and knowledge to build the best possible solution, this phase is important to share and show your wireframe to many others, those in your specific work or those who know nothing about it as well, to allow them to either validate or suggest improvements. 

WHY DO WE USE WIREFRAMES?

Wireframes hold great importance, as the way you choose to design your website/app will change what specific target audience your brand’s design attracts. The reason we wireframe is because we need to form a plan for our website or app’s design and functionality including all design aspects and linkages before actually building the website/app. There is also the issue of making sure your design is being conveyed in the right way and sending the right message to your target audience even through different screen sizes, making sure your material is responsive while being easy application to access. Ensuring that you have a complete and perfected interface sketched out is one of the most important parts of creating a wireframe. This is mainly because perfecting the interface structure and creating wireframes help you save loads of time and means you’ll have less mistakes to fix later, since wireframing comes before any of the coding and design elements are finalized and concrete in nature. 

The links to where I found my information can be located here and here.