Mobile App Wireframes Creation Guide
Why is wireframing important?
Ever imagined your body without skeleton: A futile body mass incapacitated of doing anything! The same goes for mobile apps. Mobile apps also need some forethoughts before their development or else they would just be a waste of time and investment. What else could be better than a wireframe? A basic visual layout of how you want your app design to be, and the layout placements of your app. While designing, what is the most important is to figure out the basic challenges that might strike your table. This is where wireframing comes to your escape! From helping the developer understand the interaction of diverse functioning elements of the app to the real-time evaluation of the challenges that you can encounter during mobile app development, wireframes tackle it all!
What is Wireframing?
Basically, Wireframing means defining the basic skeleton and overall design of the website before the development. Laying out the functionality of the app, taking into account the user needs and the journey is what wireframing is all about. Ensuring the terminology and structure of your app matches the user requirements is what makes wireframing an unparalleled and indispensable task.
You must be wondering why to waste time on creating wireframes rather than starting with the development of the app straight away.
Here are a few points to pacify the unrest that this question might be creating in your mind:
- PRACTICAL MANIFESTATION OF IDEAS:
Being aware of the saying *An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all*, you must initially implement your ideas through wireframes to check the feasibility of a particular idea.
- TEAMWORK MANAGEMENT:
If you’re not good at easily explaining your ideas through words, this is a one-stop solution for you. Wireframing not only helps in sharing your ideas through a practical outline but also avoiding the unnecessary physical meetings with your colleagues.
- DETECT THE BUGS:
The unrivaled feature of wireframes is that it helps you diagnose the bugs beforehand only so that you could take the required preventive measures and elevate the success rate of your actual development process.
Now, here are some recommendations that will surely help you bear aloft the development of wireframes:
- CHOOSE A DESIGN TOOL YOU ARE WELL VERSED WITH:
The utmost important tip is that you must use a design tool that suits the best to your needs and the one you have an expertise in. This will definitely help you during designing: in detecting and fixing the bugs and errors!
There are a number of design tools available but Sketch is the unrivaled and unbeatable of all! Beating photoshop which was once the most widely used design tool, Sketch became the most famous, irreplaceable and unique, it uniqueness owing to its features: from handling design systems to icon assets. Using Sketch helps in attaining transparency within the designing team.
Another renowned app for design is Figma which is a user interface based tool for designing wireframes. What distinguishes Figma from other tools is the possibility of all the design team members being able to edit a file all at a time and provide real-time feedback of design.
- USE STANDARD SIZE FOR YOUR DESIGN ELEMENTS:
All the design elements must be of standard size: not too small or too big! Be it text or design buttons, everything must adhere to the platform standards. This provides a raw idea of how your wireframed layout blend with the platform standard sizes. Wireframing provides you with an idea of whether your buttons and text will fit in well with the platform standards or not.
- DON’T CRAVE FOR PERFECTION! :
No doubt perfection is important but wireframe is just a raw layout for app development and yearning for perfection may take a lot of time of yours, which may all turn futile in the end because our goals keep on varying throughout the process.
Also, using too many colors and different font sizes is too tedious and time demanding at this stage. But we can use very few colors and fonts to govern and enhance the user’s visual journey. Making the user the habitual of diverse and a large variety of colors creates hindrances in making hard decisions. So, just define the overall layout of the app in a wireframe, not the nuances regarding the colors or fonts used.
- HAVE COMPLETE KNOWLEDGE REGARDING NEEDS OF SMALL AND LARGE BUSINESSES:
Wireframing also depends on the type of client: whether it’s being done for enterprise businesses or startups. Both need a different approach:
A large enterprise already has a user base and a strategy, all you need to do for them is to work upon their demands, fulfill their expectations and deliver ROI. On the other hand, the approach for startups is monotonous, where we can start from simple and basic designs and keep on evolving through the updates and modifications. For startups, it’s the creativity that matters! If you’re creative, you’re surely one step ahead of your competitors! Knowing the type of business can help you provide a complete personalized solution to them.
- PRESENTATION OF WIREFRAMES TO CLIENTS:
Despite your efforts, if you’re not able to put your wireframe in a presentable manner to the users, all your struggle goes in vain. The most crucial step is the presentation of the wireframe to the clients. Presentation basically encompasses showcasing your visual designs and validating your decisions regarding the choice of a particular size of button and placement of text. So, the designers must be well aware of the minute details and reason for the preference of a button and text design over others for conveying that to the client in the best possible way.!
- WIREFRAME IS JUST A REFERENCE, NOT THE FINAL DESIGN:
Wireframes are just a raw sketch of your app design, not the final products! These help you get easily through the struggle of transformation from the wireframe level to the development level. Once wireframing is finished, you don’t always have to change the wireframes while mockups and analysis. All you need to do is keep on improving the design draft at every stage and once you do that, half the battle in designing is already won!
So, Wireframing is one of the most efficient ways of starting off the development of your mobile app with a bang on. Wireframing not only helps you in detecting bugs, deciding placements and sizes of application elements but also provides convenience to your co-designers and boost transparency levels. So, don’t vacillate, start wireframing and commence your app designing process right away!