I find this to be hardest thing to overcome in my admittedly minimal wireframe experience. It is so, so easy to get sidetracked by minutia and have a conversation that should be high-level turn into a disappointing and unproductive design critique. I’m excited to give your techniques here a shot!

Thanks for the attribution. Your workshop sounds interesting. I’m curious to know more about it.

http://consulting.ascentium.com/blog/ux-seo/Post222.aspx

In my experience, over time I have used several different ways to create wireframes – right from Word (cons – formatting issues and would crash every now and then), Excel (seems weird but tabs helped – downside cannot print it all in one go!), Visio (did well for most part) until clients bought newer products – Axure, iRise being some of them. ‘Wireframes’ are more detailed followed up with interactive javascript based HTML prototypes or HTML outputs from Axure / iRise.

Although, I sketch a lot like Maria in notepads one of the best ways that worked really well with the ‘clients’ was a quick drawing of a succession of screens on flipcharts (to depict interactions) – great for discussing ideas, allowing the client, stakeholders, focus groups a ‘freehand’ to mark out the good / bad points on the actual ‘paper prototype’ – the immediate pros were that the client, stakeholders were more ‘involved’, would be more open about their thoughts – overall very interactive sessions and best of all actually had quicker sign offs.

The next thing that was a shade better than a ‘paper prototype’ in this context which worked equally well was ‘Balsamiq’ – a quick and dirty way of creating the first initial ideas – a sort of a kickoff session on ‘ideas’ at hand. A great tool to have in th realm of ‘sketchy wireframes’. The clients review the JPGs / images (saved using Balsamiq) and then go over their initial thoughts in a meeting.

I think what happened over time is that clients started “expecting more” from wireframes – to ‘see’ the closest thing to the real application – simulating interactions. Hence, the sudden influx of wireframing tools in this “sketchy wireframing’ space. By far what is important to know is ‘your’ work environment and what really works best for you to complete your task effectively and quickly. To ‘adapt’ and make the best of what’s available in the market and get the best results in the shortest time frame.

Thanks for this great article and for mentioning pidoco°, of course!

I just wanted to add, that another cool thing about digital/clickable wireframes is, that you get a much better feel for the usability than with pen and paper since you can really click through all links and navigate these digital wireframes like a real website. Furthermore you can easily perform data generating usability tests that help you making the right decisions about what clickpaths work fine and which need to be re-designed for peak performance with your site user. Do these tests already in the stage of prototyping and save the money for later changes after the site has been programmed (aka. “finished”).

Please note: Since we got a very good rating from Aaron, we love to hear you comments about our pidoco° wireframing tool too! You can check us out for free or call me for any questions: +49-30-4881 63 85!

Thanks and best regards

Michael
from pidoco°