In the dynamic realm of digital experience design, the secret for success is often careful planning and customer insight. Whether it is a website or mobile app, a podcast or virtual cooking class, the process of wireframing, i.e., conceptualising and visualising the user experience, is crucial for achieving the goals of experiences.

In this blog post we explore the power and potential of wireframing in experience design.

Understanding and using wireframing

Wireframing is the process of creating the outlines for digital interfaces, focusing on structure, layout, navigation and functionality without fixating on the visual design elements (which is the whole point in storyboarding). Wireframing makes it possible to design and offer better services and experiences. Essentially, wireframes serve as the skeleton of a digital experience, a blueprint, providing a clear and logical framework for the content and user interactions. (Bruton 8.9.2022)

Wireframing is used in many courses at Haaga-Helia. For example, when students take part in design sprints, they need to get customer feedback for their design ideas, and they come up with a mockup interface, a prototype, to quicky test their ideas with real customers.

Haaga-Helias Lab8 offers useful wireframing canvases to start with. Platforms like Figma and Miro can also be used to create realistic versions of apps and websites. Canva has been a firm favourite for our students whenever they design websites and social media campaigns.

Guidelines for wireframing

Wireframes are a good basis for development and collaboration between designers and customers. Just like with all service design tools and methods, wireframing is based on customer understanding and user research. It is vital to understand customer needs, behaviours and pain points. Wireframing often begins with simple versions and further versions have more features to test, mimicking the real digital experience more over time.

In the beginning, it is important to focus on functionality, not esthetics and other visual design elements. According to Raghav (21.12.2023), wireframes usually help arrange overall content like text, images, menus, buttons, multimedia and other elements in the digital experience to make a smooth and interesting story for users.

Wireframes also enable designers to experiment with different layouts and functionalities. By making simple prototypes early on, experience designers can get feedback and decide what to do before spending a lot of time and resources on how things look. (Knapp et al. 2016) Wireframes are widely used in A/B testing. Marketers can, for example, create multiple email campaign wireframes with different designs or content elements and test them with a sample audience to determine which version performs better in terms of engagement and conversion metrics (Hubspot 29.1.2024).

In our course on Digital Experience Design, we advise our students to experiment with different tools for wireframing. They never disappoint us, and we also get to see implementations of a variety of tools during the course. Wireframing is an important skill to have in the world of work today and tomorrow. It helps experience designers to deliver digital delights!