OK, so when we talk about the delivery that is Wireframes, what we are really talking about User Interface Design. The granularity to which these wireframes should be designed is a topic of constant debate. At RTCRM, we design wireframes across a spectrum of fidelities, depending on the type of project we are working on and the proclivities of other design team members. There are some really good information architects out there that will tell you that wire frames should be as sparse and minimalist as possible, and that most of the information needed to create the interactive experience in question can be realized form flows and maps. While this IA-centric approach is fine for some projects (typically content heavy sites without much functionality), I think there are situations where such a dogmatic methodology comes up short. Many times, we need to create high fidelity wireframes in order to properly articulate an a user experience. This is why I i try to push our designers to be both great architects and user interfaces designers. To me, User Interface Design makes up one third of the User Experience Design equation, with the other two thirds being User Research and Information Architecture. Now that Rich Internet Applications lets us do on websites what we used to be able to do only in software design, the role of User Interface Design is more important in web experience design than ever before.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 7th, 2008 at 10:48 am and is filed under interactive design, other, technology, user experience design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.