THE GUIDE TO

WIREFRAMING
For Designers, PMs, Engineers and Anyone Who Touches Product

CALL TO ACTION

INDEX
1.... INTRODUCTION

2....A PRACTICAL LOOK AT USING WIREFRAMES

Who Uses Wireframes?

Why Should Anyone Use Wireframes?
How Should I Use Wireframes?

3....50 SHADES OF WIREFRAMES

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Wireframing & Prototyping Convergence

Choosing Your Wireframe Style
Practice Makes Perfect

4... 4 NON-DIGITAL WIREFRAMING WEAPONS

25

Beyond Wireframing Software

Sketching
Black & Whiteboarding
Paper Cutouts (i.e. Paper Prototyping)
Stenciling
Use Whatever Works

5... 4 DIGITAL WIREFRAMING WEAPONS

36

Word Processing Software

Graphics Editing Software
Presentation Software
Wireframing & Prototyping Software
Sharpen Your Skills

6... THE DESIGN PATTERN & WIREFRAME LIBRARIES GUIDE

49

Importable Libraries
Standalone Libraries
Youve Got Options!

7... FRESH UI DESIGN PATTERNS

71

Design Patterns & Wireframe Examples

Beg, Borrow & Steal When Appropriate

8... DESIGN PRINCIPLES FOR WIREFRAMING

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Plan a little do the rest

Set expectations not just goals
Start with users and their needs
Think how, not what
Start simple, stay simple
Dont confuse change with improvement
Everything has a meaning
Be consistent, not uniform
Low-fidelity doesnt mean unrealistic
Experiment & collaborate quickly
Your designs will get built
Shipped is better than perfect
Ready, set, wireframe!

9... ABOUT UXPIN

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1
INTRODUCTION
In this book, I share a wide breadth of examples, comparisons, frameworks,
references and insights to help you better utilize wireframes in your product design
and development process.
I talk about basic concepts like who uses wireframes, whats their purpose and how
you can use them. I also detail the many types of wireframes you can create, and
the types of tools used to create them. For more experienced readers, Ive also laid
out the top web and mobile wireframe example and pattern sources, and highlight
some of the best web and mobile UI design patterns that have cropped up in the
past few years. Finally, I cover design principles that are hopefully helpful as you
wireframe and, ultimately, build products.
Hopefully, this is the start of a discussion. These are some of the many questions
that my team at UXPin and I are trying to answer every day. And we need to answer
them so we can build one of the best wireframing and prototyping tools that you or
people like you will use and love.
Wed love your thoughts on what Ive written.
And feel free to include anyone else in this
discussion by sharing this e-book.

For the love of products,

Chris Bank

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with

A PRACTICAL LOOK
AT USING WIREFRAMES
Who uses wireframes, whats their purpose & how do they work together

Photo credit: wireframe, ipad, pencil & notebook. Baldiri. Creative Commons

Wireframing is an important tool for product design and development.

Whether youre building the next hot startup or a solid website or mobile
application, wireframes are invaluable in keeping everyone on the same page not
just product managers, designers, and engineers. And they can be changed really
quickly to accommodate the collaborative and iterative nature of product design
and development, especially in agile startups and enterprises.
For this reason, wireframes are typically created in the product design and
development process in one way or another, even if its a quick sketch on scratch
paper or a grid notepad.
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Who Uses Wireframes?

In short, anyone involved in the product in any capacity.
Although designers, developers, and product managers typically create and use
wireframes the most in their daily work, many people benefit from wireframes.
These may include business analysts, information architects, interaction designers,
user experience designers, graphic designers, programmers, and product managers.
In a later series, Ill talk more about how these team members should think about
working together, including their use of wireframes and other design tools.

Why Should Anyone Use Wireframes?

Wireframes are the blueprint for design.
Theyre supposed to connect the underlying conceptual structure (or information
architecture) to the surface (or visual design) of a website or mobile app. More
specifically, theyre visual representations of an interface, used to communicate the
following details to get everyone on the same page:

Photo credit: uxpin.com

Structure How will the pieces of this site be

put together?
Content What will be displayed on the site?
Informational hierarchy How is this
information organized and displayed?
Functionality How will this interface work?
Behavior How does it interact with the user?
And how does it behave?

Wireframes are not supposed to represent the visual design, contact graphic
elements, or convey the brand or identity.

Why Should I Use Wireframes?

The purpose of any particular wireframe varies slightly by the people creating or
using them in any company. Whether sketched, grey boxed, wireframed in a
graphic editor or in a dedicated wireframing and prototyping tool like UXPin, the
same information can be conveyed. Therefore, its less about the tool and more
about how fast you can convey the information you need to others.
Interaction & UX Designers and Information Architects use wireframes to show
user flows between views or pages. Typically, a combination of flowcharting,
storyboarding and wireframing are used to achieve this.
In the following examples, you mostly see detail about product structure,
functionality, and behavior, with limited details about content or information
hierarchy well leave that for the designers.

Photo credit: uxpin.com

Graphic Designers use wireframes to push the user interface (UI) development
process. It can inspire the designer, resulting in a more fluid creative process. And
is ultimately used to create graphic mockups, interactive prototypes, and the final
design. Typically, a combination of sketching, storyboarding and wireframing in low
or high-fidelity are used to achieve this.
In the following examples, you mostly see detail about product content and
information hierarchy, and limited detail about structure, functionality, and behavior
that was done by the UX designers and information architects.
Developers use wireframes to get a more tangible grasp of the sites functionality.
It gives the developer a clear picture of the elements that they will need to code.

Photo credit: uxpin.com

For back-end development, wireframes can be low-fidelity the way a ux designer or

information architect might produce them they care more about product structure,
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image: UXPin

image: UXPin

functionality and behavior. For front-end development, its more helpful to have
high-fidelity wireframes a designer would produce they care about content and
information hierarchy as much as the structure, functionality and behavior.
Business Analysts use wireframes to visually support the business rules and
interaction requirements for a screen.
Depending on the business, industry or the analysts specific role, they will care
more about only one or two of the following structure, content, information
hierarchy, functionality and behavior. For example, an advertising or content analyst
probably cares more about content, functionality and behavior whereas a regulatory
analyst may care more about information hierarchy or structure. However, it varies
too widely to say.
Internal Business Stakeholders (ex: Product Managers, Project Managers and
Executives) review wireframes to ensure that requirements and objectives are met
through the design. This fits into their overall product strategy and scope of a
specific project or set of projects. It gives managers an early, close-up view of the
site design (or re-design).
Barring some rough sketches, they care about every type of wireframe the team is
looking at because theyre all part of the blueprint of design. Any wireframe that
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conveys the requirements and objectives of the product is the Holy Grail to a
product and project management other executives typically care about various
parts of the design process, especially the end result.
External Business Stakeholders (ex: Partners and Clients) also review wireframes
to ensure that requirements and objectives are met through the design. It gives
managers an early, close-up view of the site design (or re-design).
However, they typically care more about annotated, polished (if not high-fidelity)
wireframes than many of the types of wireframes internal business stakeholders
favor for speed in collaboration and execution. Remember, theyre busy running
their own businesses. And because they typically dont work as closely with you,
they want something clean and readable to quickly get up to speed on what theyve
missed while youre toiling away on design.

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3
50 SHADES OF WIREFRAMES
The many styles that make wireframing a sexy part of product design

Photo credit: dropbox.com

Now that you have a better understanding of who uses wireframes, whats their
purpose and how teams work together to use them, its time to cover the many
shades of wireframing. Specifically, I cover the ways you can make wireframes, what
levels of detail you can provide, and how to tie all product details together in the
finishing stages.
But first, lets revisit the purpose of wireframing so the irresistible pictures below
make sense. Wireframes are visual representations of an interface, used to
communicate the following details to get everyone on the same page:
Structure How will the pieces of this site be put together?
Content What will be displayed on the site?
Informational hierarchy How is this information organized and displayed?
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 Functionality How will this interface work?

Behavior How does it interact with the user? And how does it behave?

Wireframing & Prototyping Convergence

Theres a lot of chatter about high-fidelity, functional prototypes, and MVPs these
days and for good reason: you know exactly what youre getting. While that sounds sexy in theory, product teams cant just go from 0 to 100mph in most cases
instead of making a Minimum Viable Product (MVP), youll make a Sucky User
Experience (SUX).
Even elite designers, product managers, and engineers who are exceptional at
conceptualizing high- and low-level details about a product on-the-fly need to
wireframe in some way, shape, or form. And most product teams small and lean,
or large and bulky still rely heavily on wireframing, using digital tools like UXPin or
analogue ones like pencil and paper.
What Im seeing, however, is a convergence of tools for wireframing and
prototyping, a blurring of traditionally distinct stages in the product development
cycle to create a broadened spectrum of wireframe styles that allow teams to
communicate at the level of detail and speed required.

Choosing Your Wireframe Style

Okay, so theres probably only a few kinds of wireframes youll ever use. But if you
count variations of medium and level of detail, you could probably get close to
50 and it matters!
I covered this topic to some extent in The Aesthetics of Wireframes and the
Importance of Context, but wanted to go deeper. Whether youre aware of it or not,
every shade, line, text, graphic, interaction that you add to a wireframes impacts
how people interpret and understand the product concepts. Like English (or French
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if youre looking for a more romantic language), wireframing is a language for

product design and development.
And as people across the World still debate semantics of their respective languages,
product teams do the same especially with wireframing. Over the years, Ive heard
the terms sketches, mockups, and even prototypes used synonymously with
wireframes. To overcome much of this confusion, traditional wireframing tools
have remained incredibly austere and carved out their own niche.
But the UXPin team sees this line blurring as product iteration cycles shorten, team
composition and process varies more widely, and team members have more
influence over communication and style preferences. The bottom line is that every
team develops its own internal language, a slight variation from the norm, and
wireframing is flexible enough to accommodate many styles to get the job done.

Tools & Medium

Many pundits may disagree whether or not some of these tools and medium are
relevant to wireframing, but if it looks like a wireframe and smells like a wireframe,
Im calling it a wireframe. No matter what anyone tells you, you can achieve the
majority of your objectives in wireframing through any of these. Im not here to hold
you back with semantics just get the wireframes done!
Sketching. You can sketch with anything that makes pigment on a surface.
Because there are so many options, we gave you double the examples below so
you could see the true breadth of tools and medium you could use. So get out your
pens, pencils, markers, crayons, Paper App even chalk or whiteboard markers
and start sketching!

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Photo credit: War of the roses. jm3 on Flickr. Creative Commons 2.0

Paper Cutouts. You can use standard paper wireframing kits (which was the
precursor to the UXPin wireframing and prototyping software), or simply cut out
the sketches youve made on paper or another medium you can always cut down
edges later for re-sizing. Although this isnt a wireframe, Common Crafts famous
Dropbox explainer video illustrates how fun this type of wireframing can be.

Photo credit: Wireframe brainstorms. sonali sridhar. Creative Commons 2.0

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Photo credit: uxpin.com

Stenciling. There are many templates you can print out, stenciling kits to make your
own, and full paper wireframing kits that come with standard paper elements like
the UXPin paper product I mentioned above.
Wireframing Software. There are many digital wireframing software solutions that
you can use, but only a few serious apps that are truly worth checking out, in our
opinion the rest tend to be limited, or have stopped innovating. To name a few
products, UXPin, Balsamiq, Axure, and Proto.io are great.

Photo credit: uxpin.com

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Graphic Design Software. There are many digital graphics software (free and paid)
that could be used but the vast majority of designers and product managers use
Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, or Sketch for graphic design already so those are
clear winners if you choose to use them for wireframing too.
For many product teams, however, the better option is wireframing software because theyre focused solutions for wireframing, and a central medium for collaborating
on wireframes and integrating with other tools that are important in the entire product design lifecycle. I will cover this in greater detail in the next part of this series.

Adobe Photoshop CC 2014, Photo credit: uxpin.com

Presentation Software. Most people have used presentation software in their life
it seems almost mandatory in basic US education and its even more common
among business people. The broad familiarity of this tool makes it another great basic option for creating and presenting wireframes to teams. And you basically have
two choices PowerPoint or Keynote and templates like Keynotopia exist to get
you started.

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Photo credit: uxpin.com

Fidelity Levels
Barring limitations on the medium and tools you use, you should there are varying
levels of detail you can dive into based on the stage the product design process and
overall objective of the particular wireframe.
Block Diagrams provide the most basic but essential information about a wireframe: the layout and types of content or functionality you would like to present
to your visitors. You can also set the information hierarchy and typography in this
stage by adding text and varying the sizes to show emphasis or hierarchy. Just make
sure to set your grid ahead of time to stay structured and help you visually tie
together the elements in the beginning stage.
You can get creative in this stage since youre at the beginning stages of setting
constraints but keep in mind existing design patterns, overall objectives of the
product, and any other constraints or user flows at this stage because its easy to get
off track if youre working with an existing product or havent built an intuition around
good and bad page layouts. And make sure that you that you dont lose
sight of the overall layout when adding text it can bite you later on. Unsurprisingly,
you can create this level of wireframe with every tool and medium I mentioned above.

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Photo credit: Wireframe. Baldiri. Creative Commons 2.0

Grey Boxes allow you use the full grayscale spectrum to emphasize the layout
and particular elements without taking the time to choose a color palette or cluttering your wireframe with lorem ipsum text, both which may end up distracting
you in the initial design steps. This may help you later on with the graphical design
as well. Its especially great for testing user flows and organizing graphical content,
but can also be a personal preference over block diagrams or blocks with text.

High-Fidelity Text is one of several ways you can make a wireframe more realistic

Photo credit: Front Door Wireframes. meedanphotos. Creative Commons 2.0

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without going too granular into the graphical details. This may mean filling in the
actual copy, the copy length, ideal font, sizing, weights, and so on. As with the other
variations of high-fidelity wireframes, this level of detail about the product should
be understood with little or no explanation so you can move onto the next wireframe to keep the product design and development process going.

Photo credit: uxpin.com

High-Fidelity Color is another way you can make a wireframe more realistic without going too granular into the graphical details. This may mean filling in very specific
background, button, text, or other colors to emphasize desired actions or user flows
beyond what grayscale can offer. Be careful not to go crazy with the color or you risk
both reducing the effectiveness of color highlighting, wasting a lot of time on making a pseudo-mockup that your graphic designer will ultimately replace, or making
it harder to communicate other details of the wireframe to stakeholders because
theyre distracted by the visuals they may even perceive the wireframe as a bad
mockup instead of a slightly more detailed wireframe.

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Photo credit: uxpin.com

High-Fidelity Media is another way you can make a wireframe more realistic without going too granular into the graphical details. This may mean filling in a picture,
video, thumbnail, avatar, background image, or the like. This is becoming increasingly popular with the proliferation of content-centric products one of the trends
highlighted in UXPins Design Book of Trends 2013-2014 since the type of content
can have a significant impact on the overall structure and information hierarchy.

Photo credit: uxpin.com

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High-Fidelity Interactions is another way you can make a wireframe more realistic
without going too granular into the graphical details. While I will cover adding interactions and click-through links to your wireframe later, this type of wireframe is
more about visually showing interactions on a static wireframe. For example, pop-up windows, expanding or zooming in on content, and broadly showing swiping,
scrolling, tapping and clicking interactions.

Photo credit: uxpin.com

Additional Details
Now that youve chosen the proper medium and tools, and have drawn out a wireframe or wireframes at the right level of detail, you need to add the finishing touches. Some wireframe details may need explanation, multiple wireframes may
need to be tied together to show the user flows, while others may need to show
interactions.
Basic Wireframes alone are only as good as your ability to produce the right level
of detail needed to build or improve the product. Typically this isnt sufficient alone,
but can be in several scenarios. For example:
Youre the one wireframing and prototyping or programming the product you
dont need to cover every detail!
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 Your graphic designer is more experienced and is given the freedom to interpret
the wireframe with fewer constraints.
Youre making very specific changes to the site that are well-understood and/or
documented elsewhere, perhaps in a product requirements doc or wiki like Google Docs, or product management software like JIRA.
Youve seen enough basic wireframes above so Ill hold off on sharing more.
Annotated Wireframes are great for adding a broad range of details to any basic
wireframe without cluttering it or risking scope creep or missing the point completely. For example, although wireframes are the quickest and easiest way to specifying interaction, annotations are often necessary to communicates what happens
when certain actions are triggered. Some examples of detail you can include:
Functionality: clicks, taps, swipes, zoom, pop-ups, data inputs and outputs, etc.
Content: text, fonts, layout, sizing, linking, graphics, multimedia, dimensions,
resolution, etc.
Behavior: animation styles, speed, and positioning, interactions, link
destinations, etc.
Key constraints: hardware, software, browser, data, etc.

Photo credit: uxpin.com

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Wireframes With User Flows are increasingly common as flowcharting and wireframing converge at the earlier stages of product design. Sometimes words alone
cannot communicate a behavior, especially with user flows. They can look like traditional storyboards or more precise interfaces as wireframing tools evolve. In some
instances, these wireframes are simply static views of a fully interactive wireframe.
In other cases, it could be a slideshow or a collection of wireframes set side-by-side to show a primary user flow or set of user flows without detailing every link and
flow.

Photo credit: Slideshows. Paul Downey. Creative Commons 2.0

Interactive & Click-through Wireframes are as close to a prototype as you can

get before final product its like animating a storyboard. They allow you to actually
experience interactions (ex: taps, clicks, and swipes) within or between individual
wireframes instead of imagining the user experience through static wireframes and
flows. Adding interactions before going to full mockups or even live prototyping can
save significant designer and developer hours. This is a powerful variation of wireframes that can only be done in presentation and graphic design software, or wireframing and prototyping software like UXPin, Balsamiq, Axure, and Proto.io.
Unfortunately, I cant visually represent this but you can always play around with
some interactive wireframes in UXPin.
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Practice Makes Perfect

Now that youve done your homework on how to think about creating wireframes,
its time to put pen to paper and pixels to screens. I gave you a brief overview of the
tools and medium you can use to create wireframes so you understand the breadth
of your options.
In the next two chapters 4 Non-Digital Wireframing Weapons and 4 Digital Wireframing Weapons Ill cover each of their strengths, weaknesses, and next best
alternatives so you know where to start.

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4
4 NON-DIGITAL
WIREFRAMING WEAPONS
A comparison of the different tools for wireframing choose wisely

In this chapter, I going in-depth on the analog tools and medium used to create
wireframes, their strengths and weaknesses, and how they relate to wireframing
and prototyping software. Ill detail wireframing and prototyping software in the
next chapter, 4 Digital Wireframing Weapons.

Beyond Wireframing Software

Over the years, Ive heard the terms sketches, mockups, and even prototypes
used synonymously with wireframes. Initially, wireframing tools were paper-only
with what many now consider basic (not comprehensive) layouts. And the initial
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versions of digital wireframing and prototyping tools were either incredibly austere
and covered the wireframing niche of product design (i.e. Balsamiq circa 2008), or
exceptionally complex and bridged the product design stages, namely wireframing
and prototyping (i.e. Axure circa 2003). While digital tools proliferate, the old paradigms of paper wireframing and prototyping remain, leading designers, product
managers, and engineers alike to further conflate the terms used daily.
Fifteen years since the first wireframing and prototyping software applications were
built, the UXPin team sees lines between product stages and corresponding terminology blurring as product iteration cycles shorten, team composition and process
varies more widely, and team members have more influence over communication
and style preferences, and development is much more customer-centric which varies by product and industry. The bottom line is that every team develops its own
unique product design process to meet their goals with the resources they have,
and wireframing categorically has the best balance of structure and flexibility to accommodate myriad ways of getting the job done.
Below, Ive laid out the most common types of analog tools and medium used for
wireframing.You can also read more about paper tools in UXPins article Better Use
of Paper in UX Design. Many pundits may disagree whether or not some of these
are relevant to wireframing, but if it looks like a wireframe and smells like a wireframe, Im calling it a wireframe. No matter what anyone tells you, you can achieve the
majority of your wireframing objectives defining product structure, content, information hierarchy, functionality, and behavior through any of these. What were
once concretely prototypes, sketches, or mockups may now be variations of
wireframes.
Im not here to hold you back with semantics just get the wireframes done!

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Sketching
You can sketch with anything that makes pigment on a surface there are many
beautiful options. So get out your pens, pencils, markers, crayons, or Paper App
and start sketching!

Photo credit: Mobile wireframes. Benoit Meunier. Creative Commons 2.0

Pros
Speed Its really quick to pull out a piece of paper or open a blank sketching
screen, and start drawing out product design ideas at any level as they come to
you. You dont have to search through element libraries, switch stylus or cursor
tool, memorize keyboard shortcuts, or rifle through files, which all interrupt your
thought process. As documentation of the product matures (ex: existing wireframes, maser templates, and saved element libraries), however, wireframing and
prototyping software can become faster even at this stage.
Flexibility You can easily switch from high to low-level product concepts or
details, and even include them on the same page. Wireframing and prototyping
apps are inherently more structured or focused and thus constrained which
may not accommodate your full thought process especially at the earlier product design stages. While traditional wireframing apps like Balsamiq intentionally
27

constrain the user, newer wireframing software like UXPin is blurring the lines
between sketching, wireframing, flowcharting, and prototyping to offer more
flexibility across the full design process.
Limited Distractions You can really focus on the product structure, content,
information hierarchy, functionality and behavior instead of visual design by
having few if any options for fonts, colors, or general styling. Some wireframing
tools do this intentionally for the same reason.

Cons
Duplicate Work You dont have master templates or elements to re-use or
apply changes across different views. You also cant neatly edit your sketches,
especially as you go into more detail sure you can erase or undo lines, but it
quickly becomes tedious to make multiple changes. Finally, once youve got a
finalized sketch, you cant export that work to another application to pick up
where you left off. All of your hard design work has to be transcribed somewhere
else, whether a graphic editing, presentation, wireframing, or other tool. Unfortunately, theres still some level of duplication between wireframing and graphic
editing for a host of reasons, but products like UXPin, Axure, Proto.io, and Just In
Mind provide significant overlap between those two stages to reduce duplicate
work.
Low-Fidelity You cant include media or fonts and font formatting, and its far
more difficult to visually show interactions or animations than the digital tools
I described below. Depending on the tools youre using for sketching, you may
also find limitations in providing color fidelity. I covered these types of high-fidelity wireframes in the second section of UXPins 50 Shades of Wireframing.
Non-Interactive Beyond limitations of visually showing interactions, you also
cant link sketches together. And forget about animations or advanced interactions there are far better ways to convey this information. Amongst wireframing and protoyping software, UXPin, Balsamiq, Axure, and Proto.io probably
provide the best solutions for this.
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 No Version Control This is an inherent issue with all analog tools since theyre
not timestamped, you have no idea who made changes, you cant make copies,
and you cant easily flip through versions and compare changes made. UXPin and
Balsamiq both have revision history to address this problem.
Limited Collaboration Because theres usually only a single, non-centralized
version of a sketch, collaboration around them mainly happens if and when the
person who drew them decides to show share them, possibly in a formalized
meeting. Before or after that point, few if anyone has access to them. Consider
this in stark contrast to UXPin that automatically alerts teammates when edits
or comments are made. InVision is also a great solution but you have to upload
your sketches first since its more of a prototyping and collaboration tool than a
wireframing tool.
No Standardization Elements can be inconsistent if youre not careful, and
proportions could be off, or sizing completely off which could impact a lot of information conveyed in sketches. Stencils, wireframing and prototyping apps, and
wireframing templates for graphics editing and presentation software provide a
better solution for this problem.
Ugly For the majority of you who havent gone to art or design school, your
sketches could be so bad that theyre rendered useless. Consider that before
spending too much time on sketches.

Next Best Alternative

Whiteboarding (or Blackboarding) due to the vast similarities between the two.

Black & Whiteboarding

Similar to sketching with a few minor but important differences, including that
theyre vertical and typically bigger in size. While blackboards are being replaced
by whiteboards across the World, there are tons still laying around so I wanted to
29

mention them. As for whiteboarding, you can either pay a lot of money for official
whiteboards, try Whiteyboard, make them cheaply out of glass or tile board, or use
a whiteboarding app like Conojo.

Photo credit: IA & IxD. Danny Hope. Creative Commons 2.0

More wireframing and prototyping software are also starting to provide whiteboarding functionality or something similar to it. For example, InVision now offers a whiteboarding options to better incorporate this into the full product design process,
while UXPin provides real-time collaboration so different team members can work
on the same wireframes together, no matter how simple or complex.

Pros
Similar to sketching (see above)
Scale The larger size of this wireframing medium really allows you to start at
a higher-level in the product design process, and visually tie different aspects of
the product design together, low- and high-level. With the capability to zoom-in/
out, most digital wireframing tools also provide a relatively large workspace although the view is ultimately limited by your screen size.
Prominence Most offices Ive seen are decked out with whiteboards or glass
30

walls in the halls and in every room, with notes and diagrams scattered everywhere. This is great for product design transparency as anyone who passes by
these whiteboards can understand whats going on and possibly even contribute
this is a stark contrast to sketches. Due to the collaborative nature of their job
and the abundance of meetings they typically have, whiteboards are an extremely popular wireframing tool for product managers.

Cons
Similar to sketching (see above)
Fixed Orientation Being mounted to a wall can make it more difficult to sketch, and may be a dealbreaker for some. Its surprisingly a real skill to whiteboard
well.
Limited Details The level of detail is usually limited unless youre really good
with blackboards and whiteboards or have really sharp chalk or markers. Either
way, its probably more time than its worth to go into too much detail on a whiteboard because graphic editing, presentation, and wireframing tools are better
at this.

Next Best Alternative

Sketching due to the vast similarities between the two.

Paper Cutouts (i.e. Paper Prototyping)

Similar to digital or sketch wireframing depending on how theyre produced. You
can use standard paper wireframing kits (which was the precursor to the UXPin
wireframing and prototyping software), or simply cut out paper sketches or digital
wireframe printouts you can always cut down edges later for re-sizing. Although
Common Crafts famous Dropbox explainer video isnt about wireframing,
it illustrates how fun this type of wireframing can be.
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Photo credit: Paper based prototyping. Samuel Mann. Creative Commons 2.0

Pros
Fidelity Because you can use digital wireframing tools or sketching to create
the initial elements, you get to choose the level of fidelity you want.
Standardization Because youre either creating a bunch of the same cutouts or
re-arranging the same cutout, your wireframe elements are inherently standardized.
Interactivity You can pin pin them on the wall, wrap them around your mobile
phone, tape them on your computer screen, move and rearrange elements. Adding some basic interactivity to your sketched or digital wireframes can be really
effective in understanding the user experience.

Cons
Similar to sketching or digital wireframing Depending on how you create
the initial interfaces youre cutting out.
Speed Theyre more time-consuming than sketches at first but can save time
if you expect to have to rearrange a lot of wireframe elements. And this is also
32

an extra step if youre making digital wireframes in applications like UXPin which
have basic and advanced interactions already.

Next Best Alternative

Wireframing Software because it offers similar fidelity flexibility, standardization,
and interactivity without as many of the drawbacks.

Stenciling
Similar to sketching with a few minor but important differences, including standardization and structure. There are many templates you can print out, stenciling kits
to make your own, and full paper wireframing kits that come with standard paper
elements like the UXPin paper product I mentioned above.

Photo credit: uxpin.com

Pros
Similar to Sketching (see above)
Speed Stencils act as a master templates for standard elements you may use
many times, while allowing you to sketch the rest of the details. Depending on
33

your skills and preferences, it can be as fast if not faster than sketching wireframes.
Standardization By standardizing details (such as hardware and product elements) across your sketches, it becomes easier to see the differences between
sketches and place more deliberate emphasis on certain details like layout, key
features or content, flows and so forth.
Structure Cleaner and better-aligned lines that more closely resemble digital
tools also lend more structure to your sketches so you can get a better understanding of how product content and features fit together.
Cleaner Unlike the other analog wireframing methods above, stenciling is
typically a cleaner presentation for anyone who isnt a trained designer or has a
shaky hand.

Cons
Similar to Sketching (see above)
Element Constraints Some of the flexibility of sketching is lost when you start
stenciling because youre limited to what the stencil offers. If you want to go beyond these standard elements, youre purely sketching again.
Outdated Elements Unlike wireframing software, you dont get updates on
your element libraries. So each stencil becomes increasingly useless with each
new release of the frameworks with which youre building or the platforms on
which youre building.
Focus on a Tool One of the major reasons people love sketching and black- or
whiteboarding over digital wireframing tools is that they focus less on the tool
and more on the substance. This benefit starts to get lost with a constrained tool
like a stencil.
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 Multiple Styles This is one of the few wireframing techniques that uses multiple styles in its composition. The merging of free-hand sketching and clean,
ruled lines can be distracting.

Next Best Alternative

Wireframing Software because it offers similar standardization, structure, and
cleanliness without as many of the drawbacks.

Use Whatever Works

In 4 Digital Wireframing Weapons, Ill dive into digital tools for creating wireframes.
If your free-hand sketching skills simply suck, and you think (or know) youll spend
more time erasing, scribbling-out, scrapping, and overwriting your sketches instead of producing a useful wireframe, digital wireframing tools are for you. As youll
see, there are many other reasons digital wireframing tools ought to be the primary
method for creating and maintaining wireframes. I personally know a lot of amazing
designers and product managers who go straight to the software and never sketch,
use paper cutouts, or stencil.
As you think more about how you want to create wireframes, remember two things
its okay to use more than one tool in your wireframing process, and do whatever
it takes to get the right wireframes done. Dont let semantics hold you back!

35

5
4 DIGITAL WIREFRAMING
WEAPONS
A comparison of the different tools for wireframing choose wisely

In the previous chapter, I covered analog tools and medium to create wireframes.
Below, Im going in-depth on the digital tools used to create wireframes, their
strengths and weaknesses, and how tools like UXPin are evolving to address the
evolution and diversification of product design.

Word Processing Software

Everyone (yes, everyone) has used some form of word processing software in their lives Google Docs, Microsoft Word, Apple Pages, and so on. Because this is a
36

much less common tool, it was very difficult to find examples online. But here are
some instructions if you want to take this route.

Pros
Familiarity Weve all used them so we know what we can do with them. And
since most word processors offer the very basic elements of wireframes shapes, colors and text you can theoretically use them for this purpose. Its definitely an option if youre absolutely terrible at using everything else.

Cons
Similar to Presentation Software (see below)
Basic Elements This is even more limited than presentation software, although
you can always import images and adjust the arrangement and set them above
or below text to achieve this goal. It will be far more time-consuming than the
other tools mentioned, however.
Difficult to Layout Changing the arrangement of text and pictures will easily
get you started, especially the bring in front of text command so you can move
elements around freely. However, Ive often run into issues when re-arranging
elements that are higher up on a page than others. Because word processors
are designed to adjust surrounding content as you make changes to simplify the
document creation process, it actually works against you when trying to rearrange elements independently of one another. Essentially, you cant set or lock elements into place like you can with almost all other software.

Next Best Alternative

Presentation Software is the next best alternative because youre probably familiar
with a program, and it offers far more functionality to let you create beautiful basic
wireframes. While Adobe Illustrator is the most similar to word processing while giving you more control over shapes, colors, and text, youll quickly realize how simi37

lar the limitations are between the two. And, of course, if youre not stuck in your
ways with tools youre already familiar with, Id suggest going straight to dedicated
wireframing and prototyping software they exist solely for that reason.

Graphics Editing Software

There are many digital graphics applications (free and paid) that could be used but
the vast majority of designers and product managers use Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, or Sketch for graphic design already so those are clear winners if you
choose to use them for wireframing too. But you could also try out GIMP, Pixlr, or
another popular free image editors.

Adobe Photoshop CC 2014, Photo credit: uxpin.com

Pros
Familiarity Marshall McLuhan once said, We become what we behold. We
shape our tools, and thereafter our tools shape us. Since the vast majority of designers, engineers and product managers have used or regularly use Photoshop
or Illustrator, theyve adapted their workflow around those tools over time. If you
are a power user of this software, the speed gap compared to other wireframing
tools closes even dedicated wireframing and prototyping tools like UXPin. To
wit, advanced usage of master templates, smart elements, existing graphics
work, workspace organization, and/or keyboard shortcuts could potentially make
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you as effective in Photoshop or Illustrator as UXPin for basic types of wireframes but not for advanced interactions, animations, user flows, and many of the
other features provided by dedicated wireframing and prototyping tools. And if I
had a timer and gave you a few days to learn the app, youd probably be faster in
UXPin.
Wireframing Element Libraries First and foremost, there are many wireframing templates and toolkits which turn this app into a pseudo-wireframing tool
a very basic wireframe is mainly shapes, colors, and text after all. As you work
more in this software, you can leverage master templates, smart elements and
wireframes or wireframe elements youve already created if youre smart about
it this takes a lot of discipline, though, and Ive heard more people mess this up
than do it well.
Fidelity With the ability to use almost any shape, text, or color your heart desires, you can literally create almost any wireframe you can imagine, not constrained by wireframing element or icon libraries. You can add any level of fidelity
(i.e. media, color, and text) in here with the exception of interactions and animations. Many wireframing tools limit your ability to do this intentionally. However,
thats gradually changing thanks to products like UXPin, which has been launching many high-fidelity features lately with image editing, gradient editing, one
of the most beautiful color pickers on the market, and many more to come.

Cons
Feature Bloat For the same reason these tools are so flexible, theres also a
steep learning curve and a lot of ongoing distraction from feature bloat. This is
mainly due to these products not originally being intended for wireframing. Moreover, theyve evolved to accommodate more types of graphic work in a sense, trying to become all things to all people. As a result, these tools are typically
not as quick or effective as wireframing and prototyping applications, or analog
methods for anyone who isnt an advanced user. With that said, Sketch, a new
and popular graphic editor in town, is attempting to solve this feature bloat problem through a focus on the essential features (a la the 80-20 rule), less obtrusi39

ve layers, drawing tabs within a project. However, its limited compatibility with
Illustrator and Photoshop and poor .svg support have been significant drawbacks
to using this as an option at all, especially in larger organizations where everyone
would have to switch.
Non-Stock Element Libraries Although you can find wireframing element libraries to import, it can be cumbersome to find the right ones instead of using the
stock or community-generated libraries provided by dedicated wireframing and
prototyping software. And, if youre not aware of these libraries, you may run the
risk of spending time making your own from scratch or not providing the right
level of detail because you dont know what typical wireframes should look like.
No Collaboration Most graphic editing applications dont offer any collaboration within the application its one of the main reasons Flinto and InVision
entered the market. For example, you cant edit the same document together
in real-time or invite a colleague to leave comments or annotations which is
important when working on content and information hierarchy. Moreover, there
arent dedicated areas or functionality in the software to document additional
details about the product structure, functionality or behavior. While presentation
applications like PowerPoint or Keynote provides additional areas for annotations and better illustrates user flows, wireframing and prototyping apps provide
the total package, especially applications like UXPin or Axure which allow you to
produce higher-fidelity wireframes that come very close to final mockups youd
produce in graphic editing software. Oddly enough, Adobe Creative Suite once
offered reviewing services then discontinued them hopefully this will change,
for their sake.
No Presentation You can export to PDF, email a file, or share your screen.
Thats about it.
No Flowcharting or User Flows It simply doesnt exist. You cant export images
to a PowerPoint, or visualize them in series (i.e. a user flow). The best you can do
is export them to UXPin, Axure, InVision or Flinto individually look at them side-by-side or create links between them to visualize more granular user flows.
40

 Non-Interactive It simply doesnt exist. You cant link wireframes or mockups

together, show animations, create clickable buttons, menus, or other elements
in these tools. Prototyping tools like Invision (for web and mobile) and Flinto (for
mobile) entered the market to address this issue. Additionally, wireframing and
prototyping tools like UXPin are addressing this interactivity issue both at the
wireframing and at the prototyping level so product teams can build high or low-fidelity prototypes (or interactive wireframes) so they can better test usability
and user experience at any stage in the product design cycle.
Fidelity Creep Whether or not you import and use third-party wireframing element libraries, you run the risk of not providing the right level of detail or fidelity
desired by the team. There are so many adjustments you could make even if
youre not supposed to.

Next Best Alternative

Wireframing and Prototyping Software because they not only cover the basic
wireframing functionality offered in graphic editors (shapes, text, and colors), but
they offer interactions, animations, user flows, and much more. Moreover, some
modern tools like UXPin are starting to integrate with and overlap with the basic
functionality of graphic editing applications to make the decision easier. For many
product teams, the better option is wireframing software because theyre focused
solutions for wireframing, and a central medium for collaborating on wireframes
and integrating with other tools that are important in the entire product design lifecycle.

Presentation Software
As with word processing software, most people have used presentation software at
some point in their lives, and almost every businessperson has its probably mandatory in US education by now. The broad familiarity of this tool makes it another
41

great basic option for creating and presenting wireframes to teams. Although the
predominant choices are PowerPoint and Keynote, you can also use Google Presentations, Prezi, or another popular free presentation tool.

Pros

Photo credit: uxpin.com

Familiarity As with word processing software, you know the basics. And its
really easy to learn more advanced features like animations, slide transitions,
linking slides for interactions and so forth.
Wireframing Element Libraries Because of wireframing libraries like
Keynotopia, this app can quickly become a pseudo-wireframing tool with the
basic shapes, colors, text, animations, hyperlinks, and focus on UI narratives and
user flows you need. As you work more in this software, you can also leverage
master templates, and reuse slides or parts of slides when making changes to
your wireframes. Its far easier to be disciplined about this in presentation software compared graphic design apps.
User Flows By nature, the application takes you through a linear flow. This
forcing function is great at making you think about the actual product experience
instead of separately, pretty wireframes or mockups. For more advanced users,
you can actually link presentation slides in more complex ways to showcase
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many user flows that dont necessarily follow the linear progression of a presentation. Unfortunately, most wireframing and prototyping software is clunky when
it comes to visualizing user flows but UXPin, Flinto and InVision do a great job.
Interactivity Whether youre showcasing a full-bleed wireframe or a wireframe
with annotations, you can add hyperlinks between slides and triggered animations within slides to visualize desired interactions. Ive personally done this quite
a bit and love the experience, it can be extremely time-consuming and not give
you the desired results. Also, once you start playing around with advanced user
flows and interactions, however, it becomes more difficult to incorporate slides
with supplemental notes or other contextual information about the product design. Wireframing tools like UXPin, Axure and Proto.io are better for this.

Cons
Non-Stock Element Libraries Similar to the issues in graphic design software,
it can be cumbersome to find the right element libraries, if they exist at all. Unlike dedicated wireframing and prototyping apps and their communities, presentation libraries like these arent updated as frequently and the library quality almost
always suffers. Alternatively, you may run the risk of spending time making your
own from scratch or not providing the right level of detail because you dont
know what typical wireframes should look like.
Limited Collaboration Most presentation software doesnt offer any collaboration within the application, with the exception of Google Presentation where
multiple people can work on slides at the same time and even leave comments.
However, software outside of Keynote and PowerPoint seriously lack in interactivity, manipulation of graphics, and shape, text, and color options that even make
this a tool worth considering. If you care about collaboration without compromising other benefits, you should stick with UXPin, Balsamiq, Axure, Proto.io or
other wireframing apps or check out InVision or Flinto for prototyping software.
Limited Flow Charting & User Flows As I mentioned before, you can actually communicate pretty advanced user flows. Keynote and PowerPoint actually
43

have flow diagram images for high-level flows, and you can link slides together
to show many user flows that dont necessarily follow the linear progression of a
presentation. However, its not easy to do and the flow charts (or sitemaps) arent
linked to the wireframes themselves in ways that product like Axure or UXPin
do the UXPin team is even aware of these limitations, and working on an even
tighter integration between these two features.
Limited Interactivity Clever users can actually get pretty far if they use all of
the features in Keynote or PowerPoint. And that may be all you need. Once you
start to think about the ease of adding basic interactions within wireframing and
prototyping software, and the breadth of options when you start to think about
all the combinations of elements, content, views, and animations, you quickly
come to realize why people use wireframing and prototyping software to communicate the functionality and behavior of the product. UXPin, Axure, InVision,
and Flinto are pushing the envelope here.

Next Best Alternative

Wireframing and Prototyping Software because they not only cover the basic
wireframing functionality offered in presentation software (shapes, text, colors, user
flows, and interactions), but they offer more advanced interactions and user flows,
among other things. Additionally, an increasing number of wireframing and prototyping applications allow you to export to presentations so you get the best of both
worlds here.

Wireframing & Prototyping Software

There are many wireframing and prototyping software you can use, but only a few
serious apps that are truly worth checking out, in our opinion. To name a few pro44

ducts, UXPin, Balsamiq, Axure, and Proto.io are great these are not to be confused
with prototyping-only tools like InVision or Flinto which do not offer most of the
wireframing functionality Ive been discussing. There are also myriad free, but very
limited wireframing applications.

Pros
Built for Wireframing This is self-explanatory, especially for more advanced
wireframing tools that also provide prototyping functionality like UXPin and Axure.

Photo credit: uxpin.com

Speed Because theyre designed specifically for wireframing, they should be

the fastest tools for creation, collaboration, and presentation of wireframes. For
example, power users can actually be faster than stenciling or sketching because
of how quickly they can create, copy, or adjust elements that would otherwise
be drawn out. But we know there are many ways to get from point A to B in the
world of wireframing, and often multiple tools are used to accommodate the creative thought process.
Element Libraries As I mentioned above, many of the other tools are mainly
comparable to wireframing and prototyping software because of element libraries. However, they often have limited and lower-quality libraries if any and
they dont come stock. In contrast, UXPin has 900+ web and mobile elements,
45

and many UX patterns that combine many of these elements both for inspiration and to skip starting from scratch. And these libraries are updated regularly
to keep up with the ever-evolving product standards alternatives dont come
close!
Advanced Flowcharting & User Flows Most wireframing and prototyping software offer at least a flow chart element comparable to what youd find in presentation and possibly even word processing software. However, many of them
also generate sitemaps as you create new wireframes or let you visualize wireframes side-by-side so you can navigate through them.
Advanced Interactions Product interactions and animations change so rapidly
that only dedicated wireframing and prototyping tools can really offer you the
best option for this. Sure, you can reference other products in your documentation and say, Copy that, and you can get pretty far with presentation software
for basic interactions, but theres better ways to achieve that objective. Simply
put, use a tool like UXPin, Axure, Just In Mind, InVision, or Flinto for advanced
interactions and see how far you can get before trying something else.
Collaboration When thinking about collaboration, you should be looking for a
few key features. The first aspect of collaboration is commenting and resolving
comments as a pseudo-task management system. Secondly, you must have the
ability to allow multiple people to login to the same wireframe or prototype and
edit them simultaneously. Additionally, sharing links to projects also facilitates
collaboration because you can pull collaborators into wireframes and prototypes instead of throwing it over the wall so-to-speak. Finally, revision history and
cloud storage both make it easier to sort through the archives and find the right
work. Many wireframing and prototyping tools provide some portion of these
features. While UXPin and InVision are probably the most robust, Balsamiq, Hotgloo, Just In Mind, and a few others have some level of collaboration as well.
Presentation This can either mean exporting to PDF, or presentation software,
having a built-in presentation mode, or exporting to a web or mobile app so you
can see a real-world presentation (a prototype) of what the app should look and
46

feel like. Most software allows you to export to PDF while only a few like Mockflow export to presentation apps, and only web-based versions have links to projects that you can share. And many wireframing and prototyping tools like UXPin,
Hotgloo, Moqups and InVision have a presentation mode and/or let you export
to a web or mobile app.

Cons
Lack of Familiarity Simply put, this may require a few days or weeks of training, but there are a handful of tools like UXPin that are known for usability and
ease of learning.
Limited Functionality If youre not happy with the element libraries, interactions, animations, colors, or level of collaboration and presentation, you may
have to switch to a new wireframing tool that takes time to learn again. For this
reason, Balsamiq has become one of the standards in the industry until now, it
has provided just enough to keep the broadest set of users happy. However, it is
far from a complete solution today. Products like UXPin and InVision are quickly
addressing the more of the expanding wireframing and prototyping landscape.
Limited Fidelity With the exception of tools like UXPin and Axure, most wireframing tools are low-fidelity. In fact, UXPin and Axure are the only tools to my
knowledge that allow you to go from low-to high-fidelity wireframing within the
same app. And it wont be long before some advanced wireframing tools deeply
integrate into graphic design tools like Photoshop and Illustrator to make this
process more seamless. In most wireframing apps, however, if you want higher-fidelity, you have to create mockups in a graphic design tool then export them to
prototyping products like InVision or Flinto.

Next Best Alternative

None! Kidding. Id probably say presentation software for many of the reasons I
mentioned above. This is personally how I got started wireframing but I was in
business school at the time, so that was a natural fit.
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Sharpen Your Skills

As you think more about how you want to create wireframes, remember two things
its okay to use more than one tool in your wireframing process, and do whatever
it takes to get the right wireframes done. Dont let semantics hold you back!
Whether youve been designing and managing products for years or just starting
out, it will take you a lifetime of collaboration to stay on top of your game although youll never be perfect. In the next chapter, The Design Pattern & Wireframe
Libraries Guide, I detail the very best sites on the web to give you inspiration, or to
kickstart your actual work with examples that import directly into wireframing and
prototyping tools like UXPin.

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6
THE DESIGN PATTERN &
WIREFRAME LIBRARIES GUIDE
The Very Best From All Over The Web

Photo credit: UXPin.com

According to Ralph Waldo Emerson, (Design) is a journey, not a destination. While

he was originally referencing life, broadly defined, many of you might agree with
me that design, broadly defined, is synonymous with life in many contexts.
Recently, my team at UXPin scoured the web for the top web and mobile wireframe
example and pattern sources, and came up with a pretty exhaustive list I wanted to
share. Its my hope that they will help you immerse yourself in design more throughout life to live design and breathe life into your product designs developing your purpose, planning or intent for the design of your next product.

49

Whether youre just starting to wireframe or prototype or youve been doing it for
years, youll hopefully find this useful for staying on top of mobile and web product
design trends. Use them freely for finding inspiration, or kickstarting your actual
work with examples that import directly into popular wireframing and prototyping
tools like UXPin and Balsamiq.
Make sure you also read up on UXPins free Web Design Trends and Mobile Design
Trends e-books, which cover some of the product design patterns youll find in the
libraries below.

Importable Libraries
Patterns by UXPin
studio.uxpin.com/patterns

Dozens UI design patterns and wireframe examples and growing. Its a UX wireframe and patterns library that can be imported directly into the popular wireframing
and prototyping tool, UXPin. For an increasing number of the UX patterns, theres
a matching wireframe example to get you started in UXPin or use it for inspiration
elsewhere your choice.

Photo credit: studio.uxpin.com/patterns

50

Photo credit: studio.uxpin.com/patterns

51

Mockups To Go
mockupstogo.net

~100 wireframe examples, but no UI design patterns and longer growing and relatively outdated. Its a user-contributed collection of UI components and wireframe
examples built using Balsamiq Mockups. Some of the mockups are full web pages.
These are downloadable mockups that you can use as a starting point for your own
designs in Balsamiq Mockups.

Photo credit: mockupstogo.net

Photo credit: mockupstogo.net

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Standalone Libraries
Web & Mobile
I Love Wireframes
flickr.com/groups/ilovewireframes

~1200 wireframe examples but no UI design patterns. Its a flickr group for everyone
who enjoys creating wireframes.

Photo credit: https://www.flickr.com/groups/ilovewireframes/pool/

Photo credit: https://www.flickr.com/groups/ilovewireframes/pool/

53

Wireframe Showcase
wireframeshowcase.com

Countless wireframe examples but no UI design patterns and no easy way to search
archives still very helpful if you have the time. Its a user-submitted blog of wireframes, juxtaposed with final executed site designs, with commentary. It contains
wireframe examples in all their variety, from photos of paper prototypes in the wor-

Photo credit: wireframesshowcase.com

Photo credit: wireframesshowcase.com

kplace, to annotated screenshots describing the design process.

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Web Without Words

webwithoutwords.com

Its a gallery of popular websites, deconstructed by removing all words and images,
abstracted into primitive wireframes. Pretty funky, no?

Photo credit: webwithoutwords.com

Photo credit: webwithoutwords.com

55

Wireframes Magazine
wireframes.linowski.ca/tag/wireframe

Countless wireframe examples but no UI design patterns and no easy way to search
archives. Its not a design pattern or wireframe example library, but does have a
great amount of examples. Wireframes Magazine is run by Jakub Linowski, an interaction designer from Toronto.

Photo credit: wireframes.linowski.ca/tag/wireframe

Photo credit: wireframes.linowski.ca/tag/wireframe

56

Patterntap by Zurb
patterntap.com

~5500 UI design patterns but no wireframe examples. Its a collection of specific

designs and patterns of user interaction, a living classroom where designers learn
what is working well on the Web and why. It allows designers to find inspiration and
influence from the world around them since they dont design in a vacuum. Here,
they can collect other designs besides their own ones they love and others they
hate so they pick them apart to understand the techniques behind them, learning
what works and doesnt work.

Photo credit: patterntap.com

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UX Archive
uxarchive.com

~2000 UI design patterns with a focus on flows, but no wireframes. It aims to help
people create the best user experiences possible for their apps. In the creative process of shaping such an experience, designers need to explore what others have
done to define what works, what doesnt and to observe patterns that you should or
shouldnt integrate in your app. UX Archive helps designers in this process by laying
out the most interesting user flows so you can compare them, build your point of
view and be inspired.

Photo credit: uxarchive.com

58

Behance
behance.net/search?search=wireframe

Countless searchable UI design patterns and wireframe examples, but not a focused library like some of the ones mentioned above. Its a leading online platform to
showcase & discover creative work so you get a wide array of design work on it, mainly visual design. The creative world updates their work in one place to broadcast
it widely and efficiently. Companies explore the work and access talent on a global
scale.

Photo credit: behance.net/search?search=wireframe

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Dribbble
dribbble.com/search?q=wireframe

Countless searchable UI design patterns and wireframe examples, but not a focused library like some of the ones mentioned above. What are you working on? Its a
community of designers answering that question each day. Web designers, graphic
designers, illustrators, icon artists, typographers, logo designers, and other creative
types share small screenshots (shots) that show their work, process, and current
projects. Dribbble is a place to show and tell, promote, discover, and explore design.

Photo credit: dribbble.com/search?q=wireframe

Photo credit: dribbble.com/search?q=wireframe

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Google Image Search

google.com/#q=wireframes

Countless wireframe examples and UI design patterns, although patterns are harder
to search for.

Photo credit: google.com/#q=wireframes

Photo credit: google.com/#q=wireframes

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Pinterest
pinterest.com/search/pins/?q=wireframes

Countless wireframe examples and UI design patterns, although patterns are harder to search for. As expected, this is a more pleasant experience than Googling the
same things.

Photo credit: pinterest.com/search/pins/?q=wireframes

Photo credit: pinterest.com/search/pins/?q=wireframes

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Web Only
UI Patterns
ui-patterns.com/patterns

Many UI design patterns but no wireframes, and hasnt been updated in a year or
so. Unlike other design pattern libraries, it actually has descriptions of patterns,
when theyre used, what problems theyre solving, and tips when designing these
patterns. See this example of a gallery.

Photo credit: ui-patterns.com/patterns

63

Mobile Only
Pttrns

Photo credit: pttrns.com

pttrns.com

~2500 UI design patterns but no wireframe examples. Its a curated library of iPhone and iPad user interface patterns. All patterns has been carefully chosen before
they were added to maintain excellent content quality. The site is currently doing
almost 2 millions page views per month.

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Android App Patterns

android-app-patterns.com

~1550 UI design patterns but no wireframes. Simply put, its design inspiration for
your Android app.

Photo credit: android-app-patterns.com

65

Inspired UI
inspired-ui.com

Countless UI design patterns but no wireframe examples for Android, iPad, and
iPhone.

Photo credit: inspired-ui.com

66

Mobile Patterns
mobile-patterns.com

Countless UI design patterns but no wireframes for iPhone and Android.

Photo credit: mobile-patterns.com

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MOObileFrames
moobileframes.tumblr.com

A showcase of wireframe examples for mobile apps.

Photo credit: moobileframes.tumblr.com

Youve Got Options!

Take what you need and leave the rest.
If you value being able to take your wireframe examples and design pattern
inspirations from top companies and directly adapting them to your needs, Patterns
by UXPin is probably your best option since you can import them directly. If you
mainly need a broad array of inspirations, youve obviously got a lot of other options
I personally love Pttrns and UX Archive.
Regardless of which resources you save for later, keep in mind that seeing is not
synonymous with understanding. You can browse these galleries all day, and still
never take anything valuable away from your perusal. In the next chapter, Fresh UI
Design Patterns, I detail many of the best UI design patterns that have cropped up
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in modern web sites and mobile apps recently, and examples of how theyre used
in popular web and mobile products. Some of these patterns are also covered in
UXPins free Web Design Trends and Mobile Design Trends e-books.

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7
FRESH UI DESIGN PATTERNS
Web and Mobile Product Design Trends Ive Noticed In 2013 and 2014

Photo credit: uxpin.com

Picasso once said (and Steve Jobs echoed), Good artists borrow, great artists steal.
This may be one of the most misunderstood and misused creative phrases of all
time, but also the most important in a time when product design and development
trends have exploded.
The controversy of this quote comes from its simplicity and, therefore, openness to
interpretation. Out of context, it fails to clarify the difference between copying and
internalizing; originality and innovativeness; aping and assimilating. Its not an excuse to be lazy. Rather, encouragement to learn from the work of others, build upon it,
and own the products youve designed and built to solve real, focused problems of
people those for whom you ultimately design.
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The team at UXPin recently dug through their favorite UI design pattern sources
to identify the recurring solutions that companies were coming up with to address
common design problems as web and mobile applications continue to evolve at a
rapid pace. Ive seen a beautiful assortment of ways that products use swipe, click,
hover, and hold triggers in web and mobile apps to bring users to the most relevant
secondary and tertiary information or next step in a major user flow without cluttering the interface, or even cleaning it up.
Below, Ive shared a few of these standard reference points with you to help you
as you brainstorm, sketch, wireframe, and prototype. Ive even included wireframe
examples to help you visualize these patterns at different stages in the design process. While most of these UI design patterns specifically address mobile problems,
many apply to web as well.

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Design Patterns & Wireframe Examples

Dropbox and Carousel and almost every other application have sticky fixed navigation, a universal mobile UI design pattern. As a user, you dont have to scroll all
the way back up to find your footing. Many applications also have allow you to scroll
all the way up to the top by tapping the top of your screen on mobile theres usually no visual indicator that this functionality exists though (unlike Pinterests scroll
to top tab). And as a website developer, you dont have to throw in links all over the
place to make sure people have all the relevant links they need. Likewise, now many
of the traditionally fixed links can now be added directly to the content and sections
of any page or view, not at the top-level navigation. Ive included a wireframe example of this design pattern using UXPin.

Photo credit: dropbox.com

Photo credit: carousel.com

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Facebook and Mailbox and many more apps have vertical (non-standard) navigation on both web and mobile. This will help you find sections with an application
in addition to finding all the content and data youre looking for about the product,
company, etc. on a single page through a fluid navigation that jumps you to different parts of the site. This is also a great example of a drawer, which is a very popular UI design pattern on mobile.
Similar to toggling, drawers are life-saving UI design pattern trends in light of mobile screen constraints and users need for speed. Since each drawer and slide-out is
a separate layer in an application, its not as constrained and, therefore, Ive seen
even greater variety in implementations, including many terrible ones but I wont
show you those ones.
Yelp is a phenomenal example of providing links to everything in their application.
While they provide a more explicit UI design pattern, more content-heavy applications like Flipboard can actually get confusing with the endless ways you can swipe,
tap, x-out, undo, and go-back as you navigate through its digital magazine.

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Carousel not only has a visible scrollbar, but a power scrollbar at the bottom so
you can blaze through your 1 million hosted photos with ease. As user-generated
content, feeds, groups, lists, etc. keep growing, well see even more innovative UI
design patterns that allow users to find what theyre looking for beyond search and
scroll bars.

Photo credit: carousel.com

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Tinder has made its content seamlessly responsive. This UI design pattern lets
you toggle between 2 states of a users profile simply by clicking on the main picture in each view. But they go one step further. If you swipe through pictures in the
detailed view of a user profile then click on the picture to go back to to the basic
view, it stays on the picture you clicked on. This creates an extremely fluid and intuitive user experience and flow. In all fairness, OKCupid lets you do this too.

Photo credit: http://www.gotinder.com/

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Uber lets you toggle between four types of ride services seamlessly by dragging
a slider side-to-side. In this UI design pattern, they even zoom in and out to give
you a similar level of density of cars nearby so you can see an acceptable number of
options automatically.

Photo credit: uber.com

Uber also lets you toggle between booking a ride and seeing the fare estimation by
tapping the slider button once youve chosen which ride type you want. This is a
simple yet important UI design pattern that makes me smile every time Im doing
five things while trying to get a ride somewhere, but want to make sure Uber isnt
ripping me off with surge pricing.

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RelateIQ lets you hold down main menu items to see submenus for faster navigation to views. Its one of the most complex enterprise mobile apps on the market
today so theyre going to be pulling out a lot of new and existing mobile UI design
patterns to keep it a quick and clean experience without sacrificing the power of
their web product.

Photo credit: relateiq.com

Snapchat lets you see hidden information the number of messages received
and unread by clicking on the snapchat header. Simple UI design pattern, right?

Photo credit: snapchat.com

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Yelp lets you go between listing details and the photo gallery when you drag downward to further expose the photo hidden behind a semi-transparent listing header.
The use of semi-transparency and responsive content creates a wonderful experience here. Its probably one of the more advanced but least known UI design patterns out there. Hope everyone uses it more now!
Secret only lets you take certain actions once you discover how to access the
menu. Swipe right and youll expose an action menu. This UI design pattern takes
minimalism using drawers and slideouts to a new level.

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LinkedIn lets you get to reach the main menu from anywhere by tapping the logo
(commonly a 3-line hamburger menu icon) in the top left corner to access this
drawer. This UI design pattern was first introduced to the masses by Facebook in
their mobile app, and then adopted by many companies like Path, Fancy, and so
many others. Its an easy way to hide all the less important things in a side drawer
and not worry about how a mobile application should distill the most important
information. Instead, you only have to focus on how to distill the most important
information in each view thats accessible from the side drawer.

Photo credit: linkedin.com

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Snapchat is an exemplar of minimal navigation for an immersive experience.

Instead of showing users 4 menu buttons, they show you the 1 or 2 more important
buttons and change these primary buttons depending on what view youre in. To get
between views, you can either click one of these primary buttons or swipe left-or-right. This is a unique implementation of such a UI design pattern I havent seen
such pure execution anywhere else.

Photo credit: snapchat.com

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Pinterest popularized cards, a way to allow users to browse and discover all kinds
of content in a more engaging way while accommodating responsive design trends
as well as social feed patterns extremely gracefully given its staggered and randomly sized tiles. It feels like puzzle pieces that could fit anywhere. Sadly, however,
there are many terrible implementations of this, especially if you look at Pinterests
competitors who have broadly done anything but truly understand why Pinterests
UI design pattern is better out of curiosity, I actually compared them in-depth in
my spare time in late 2013. Ive included a wireframe example of this design pattern
below using UXPin.

Photo credit: pinterest.com

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Lyft and Yelp provide maps as backgrounds, which makes sense given their local
nature. This will become an increasing trend as local applications become more prominent and more information can be layered onto the map view, making maps a full
experience not just for one-off directions on web or mobile. Youll also see a lot more
UI design patterns that blossom from videos, pictures, and other media as backgrounds. Ive included a wireframe example of this design pattern below using UXPin.

Photo credit: lyft.com

Photo credit: yelp.com

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Facebook Messenger and Instagram shows all user thumbnails in circles. Popularized by Google+ and improved by Path in some respects, this UI design pattern is
gaining popularity although its benefit over the traditional square thumbnail is not
clear other than adding variety, the unequivocal spice of life. Weve included similar example of this design pattern below using UXPin.

Photo credit: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.facebook.orca&hl=en

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Secret takes no whitespace for granted by stacking full-bleed images on top and
next to each other while layering some important information on top of them. In a
way, these images act as images as backgrounds. In another, this UI design pattern
keeps the user extremely engaged with even less white space and distracting design
details than Pinterest.

Photo credit: secret.ly

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Pinterest and Spotify let you know you can cancel adding a pin or following an
album, respectively, by transforming the + into an x button. This UI design
pattern saves real estate, makes undoing any action quick and clean, and is an overall playful solution.
Transformations and animations are particularly important in mobile applications.
You could 1) entirely replace an element with another that has slightly different
functionality, e.g. do and undo, 2) visually connect elements, e.g. zooming in on
a photo and dissolving surrounding elements when you click on it, 3) or give visual
feedback about what is happening, e.g. a transparent shadow under a draggable
object on the phone.

Photo credit: pinterest.com

Photo credit: spotify.com

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Asana lets you manipulate content directly, such as moving tasks around by
clicking-and-holding or keyboard shortcutting (on web) or pressing-and-holding (on
mobile) then dragging-and-dropping them wherever you want you obviously dont
need to do this for keyboard shortcuts. If you have a lot of tasks, another UI design
pattern may be more useful but, for most use cases, this is a great solution if you
need to re-arrange list items.

Photo credit: asana.com

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Photo credit: carousel.com

Tinder and Carousel let you vote on people or share / hide photos, respectively,
with draggable images. Tinder also gives you huge buttons so you know exactly
what to do and can do it quickly wherever you are and whatever youre doing. For
Tinder, swipe or click right if you like someone, swipe or click left if you dont. For
Carousel, swipe up to share your photos and swipe down if you want to hide them.
Tinder is one of the most well-known examples of this UI design pattern because its
the core of this mobile application its Hot or Not on-the-go.

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Mailbox popularized the side-to-side swiping actions for email clients, allowing
you to mark emails as read and schedule them for follow-up by swiping right or
left, respectively. This UI design pattern is such an enjoyable and efficient experience that its no wonder the company was acquired for $100M after being live for 1
month their viral marketing launch campaign didnt hurt either.

Photo credit: http://www.mailboxapp.com/

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Instagram lets you discover faster actions such as liking a photo by double-tapping the photo instead of scrolling down to click the like button. Im personally not
a huge fan of UI design patterns that dont let you undo an action, but its the only
example Ive seen where you can tap content to categorize it Im sure many people have accidentally liked ugly Instagram photos due to this pattern. Weve included a similar example of this design pattern below using UXPin.

Photo credit: instagram.com

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Snapchat and Facebook Messenger let you access features when you need them
by swiping any friend left. For Snapchat, now you can delete as many friends as you
want all at once I call it the disappearing friend act, but you can call it whatever
you want. For Facebook Messenger, you access even more discoverable actions, including a sub-menu called more. Interestingly enough the delete button actually
gives you options to archive or delete the conversation. In most UI design patterns,
you arent given that option since theres an archive button in the more sub-menu. Ive included a similar example of this design pattern below using UXPin.

Photo credit: snapchat.com

Photo credit: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.facebook.orca&hl=en

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Secret lets you discover new actions the way it lets you discover new menus. Swipe left on a secret and you like it. Unlike Tinder, swiping right doesnt let you unlike
it, though that gives you the hidden menu we mentioned above. Im a huge fan
of how theyve implemented this UI design pattern although it requires some brain power to remember to remember that swiping right brings up menus instead of
disliking or hiding a secret the way that many similar design patterns have been
implemented.

Photo credit: secret.ly

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Secret also has discoverable tools on the content creation side. If you dont
upload a picture, swiping left-or-right changes the color of the background while
swiping up-or-down changes the pattern. If you do upload a picture, the actions
are even more impressive. Swiping up-or-down on the right side changes dimming
while doing so on the left side changes saturation. Swiping left-or-right changes blur
of the picture. There are no other controls that let you do this nor should there be.
This UI design pattern is so intuitive and clean that youre bound to see a lot more
of this.

Photo credit: secret.ly

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Snapchat and Yelp are part of the growing number of apps that give you friend
lists. Whether its one-on-one communication or keeping track of someones tastes
and preferences, the way users explore their blossoming friend groups will become
increasingly contextual, requiring friends to become a more integral part of the web
and mobile experience. I firmly believe social UI design patterns will follow a similar
trajectory that content UI design patterns have taken as the average web and mobile user goes from hundreds of friends and followers to thousands if not millions.

Photo credit: snapchat.com

Photo credit: yelp.com

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Songkick and Flipboard are great examples of products that let you follow something, anything! Whether you have friends or not, theres endless user-generated
content to keep you busy. For the same reason friend lists will become an increasingly important UI design pattern, so will following.

Photo credit: songkick.com

Photo credit: flipboard.com

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Quora and Venmo are two of my favorite activity feeds because learning and
earning are two of the primary things people do in life. Its fascinating to passively see people I know provide meaningful answers about self-improvement while
others are spending their hard-earned money on pixels and lip rings. Thanks to this
UI design pattern, I have as much variety on most of my web and mobile applications as I do on cable TV!

Photo credit: quora.com

Photo credit: venmo.com

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Carousel and Instagram and many other apps offer chat or direct messaging as
an integral part of their experience. Private chat UI design patterns will continue to
blossom across many apps, not just traditional social networks now that users are
finally comfortable sharing more private things online and they have substantial
breadth in the content theyre generating online, even their financial transactions on
apps like Venmo.

Photo credit: carousel.com

Photo credit: instagram.com

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Medium, like many other apps, has consolidated the ugly share widgets with a
single share button to give you a beautiful experience as well as a clear action to
share the content, regardless of where you want to share it. Sounds like a win-win
UI design pattern to me.

Photo credit: medium.com

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YouTube and almost every application lets you like (or dislike) everything in a
binary way instead of using stars or other ratings. Although ride sharing apps like
Uber and Lyft currently use rating systems, it will eventually make sense for them
to have a more binary rating system the driving was either acceptable or it wasnt.
Since this UI design pattern is one of the most elegant ways of organizing content
on web and mobile applications, you will see this for a long time Im personally
hoping that the combination of content tags will allow users to see their favorite comedy shows and music videos separately without any additional work. Ive included
a similar example of this design pattern below using UXPin.

Photo credit: youtube.com

use
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Youtube and Facebook Messenger allow you to group your friends and content
alike. As content of all forms including friend profiles continues to proliferate,
the ability for users to curate and organize everything. Im very curious how these
separate applications will eventually more deeply integrate with one another as new
UI design patterns emerge.

Photo credit: youtube.com

Photo credit: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.facebook.orca&hl=en

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Venmo makes it really easy to invite others through social, mobile contacts, and
email integrations. Since word-of-mouth and referrals are a huge driver of growth
especially in consumer applications, youll see this UI design pattern proliferate and
evolve even more.

Photo credit: venmo.com

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Beg, Borrow & Steal When Appropriate

Dont be afraid to beg, borrow and steal these designs but make them your own,
and solve real problems for your users so they like the product designs you produce.
Because product design trends are moving faster than ever before, and the variety
of devices from which your web and mobile applications can be accessed is splintering, youll have to think about your product more comprehensively than ever before. Luckily, many people are in the same boat so there are many examples out there
including what Ive laid out above.
For a full list of UI design patterns, youll have to wait for our next web design
trends e-book. In the meantime, UXPins current free e-books Web Design Trends
and Mobile Design Trends has a bunch of examples.
To round off this book, I saved the best for last design principles. In the next chapter, Design Principles for Wireframing, I detail some of the principles that will help
you design better wireframes and, ultimately, better products.

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8
DESIGN PRINCIPLES FOR
WIREFRAMING
A few things to remember while youre iterating on product concepts

Photo credit: 2000 Visual Mashups. QThomas Bower. Creative Commons 2.0

This chapter is an attempt to cut through the noise from the designers, developers,
art directors, usability experts, Venture Capitalist and family members to help you
design better wireframes and, ultimately, products.
So what does it take to design a successful digital product or service? Is it the brand,
the chosen platform, the functionality, the choice of colors, or some viral features?
All of the above have some importance but no single element is why company X is a
success. Were often attached to the idea that if you just get the right idea or if your
design is cool or uses a certain technology, we will be successful there is no recipe
for success.
Take the design process serious, but dont get too attached with one particular part
of it and dont rely on any one particular discipline to give you the right answers.
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Get to the point where you have real users or customers as quickly as possible. Its
these users that will provide you with the information that will get you in a position
to make better design decisions.
With the help of our friend, Des Traynor of Intercom, the following principles should
help you get in a position.

Plan a little do the rest

An important part of building great products consistently has to do with planning. A
few questions that you may want to answer before jumping too far into the details:

Who are the core users?

What are the user needs and goals?
What are the business needs and goals?
What existing product or design patterns work for your users and business?
What are the gaps in whats currently out there?
What are some product requirements you have given your users needs and goals
(as well as those of your business?
What are your constraints (i.e. time, resources, money, skills)?

Photo credit: 21 Steps to Success. Bernard Goldbach. Creative Commons 2.0

Dont spend too much time on this upfront because sketching, wireframing and prototyping will help you refine your understanding of the answers to these questions.
But theyre important to have in the back of your mind throughout the process.
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Set expectations not just goals

Have a clear goal of what youre trying to achieve and how youll measure success.
Intel and Google popularized the term Objective Key Results (OKRs) which was
presumably derived from S.M.A.R.T goals to give product teams this direction and
many teams now use this to stay extremely focused in setting their goals. Within
this system, each individual outlines their major objectives and the quantifiable
actions (i.e. key results) itll take to achieve them. Its a technique designed for accountability and enforced with scores. In other companies, it serves as a layer of
communication that holds the company together and elevates its game at the same
time.
Beyond OKRs and SMART goals, its valuable to set expectations about the design
process and each step involved. For example, what are the steps in the design process, who is involved, what are the deadlines for each step, what level of fidelity is
necessary to properly communicate, and so forth. Think about what you expect of
others and what is expected of them, but try to keep it simple so you dont get bogged down.

Photo credit: Soaring thoughts. EladeManu. Creative Commons 2.0

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Start with users and their needs

Who is going to use my product and what will he or she do first?
So many people never answer this question or answer it too late in the design process. They start to add boxes, text, colors, and images in a way that makes sense to
them. This is great if youre the actual user. But you often arent. Chamath Palihapitiya shares this sentiment when talking about building a product that grows talk
to your users and know your users.
The difference between art and design is that design solves a problem. The design
process must start with identifying and thinking about real user needs. You should
design around those individual needs and user flows to satisfy those needs. In order
to do so, you must understand those needs thoroughly interrogating data, not just
making assumptions and remember that what users ask for is not always what
they need.
The average person your users has an okay life. Its not as amazing or glamorous
as it seems in the movies, TV or social media. Theyre not getting made, paid or laid
as much as they want. And they dont care about anything youve built unless it makes their life better. Dont forget that while youre getting lost in boxes, text, colors,
and images.

Photo credit: PE024: Figure 3.3 Rosenfeld Media. Creative Commons 2.0

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Think how, not what

Your product isnt just a bunch of features so stop focusing on them.
What matters is not what functionality your product has, but how it works. A sign-up process is not just a sign-up process, a checkout process is not just a checkout
process, a button is not just a button, a rating system is not just a rating system.
Think about how you can stand out by introducing something that everyone else
might have but in a unique way what you are selling at its core. Here are a few
questions to answer:
What is needed for your product to function well?
How much can you take away from it without sacrificing the core product?
Why will people be excited about it?
Glasses have one primary purpose, to help you see. Everything on top of that such
as colors, shapes, sizes and logos is a feature. Understand when you are working
on your core product and when you are working on adding features. The benefits
of thinking like this, is that it will help you establish a very clear and precise picture
of what makes your product your product. This will help you understand the minimal work necessary to get a valuable product out the door, and why you are adding
features when you are.
You will be surprised how much the how can help improving your product and
getting an MVP out the door.

Start simple, stay simple

Wireframe only what you and, more importantly, your users need.
Constrain yourself. A good product has limitations. It doesnt just succumb to every
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eded. It cannot be said enough. Less is more much more, and for very good reasons:
First, if you do less you can measure more. And if you can measure more, you
can better experiment with what works. Most products are simple, based on simple insights and the product teams behind them have made many small variations of those products in the process.
Second, most users will have to learn your product anyway so dont try to impress them with features before they understand what your product is all about.
Dont add new features just because you think that it will help, it wont, not yet. If
your product becomes a success its not because of how many features it has.
Finally, youll save more money by focusing resources where theyll do the most
good.
Dropbox has much to be desired, Mailbox is pretty basic, Spotify still has a way to
go, Pinterest could be so much more robust, and Uber could have way more bells
and whistles. But theyre all rock-solid products with focused features for focused
user needs and use cases.

Dont confuse change with improvement

One of the biggest challenges faced by designers, artists, and generally creative
people when producing new work is fatigue. They get this from reviewing their work
and their inspirations every minute details over and over and over. Top tech

Photo credit: Simple user interface. Jeff Kubina. Creative Commons 2.0

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companies and startups have similar problems largely due to the intensity and
time spent immersed in them.
Its very tempting after a couple of months of looking at the same design to want to
change it, and think you are improving your product. Make sure you stay focused
on things that really improve the product and make your users even more happy,
acquire more users, convert them and so on whatever your product objectives
are. If you end up making changes that dont improve or, more commonly, hurt
the product, youll have to spend resources on changing things after you launch.

Everything has a meaning

Your product sketches, wireframes, and prototypes are methods of communicating
just like any language in the world. Every piece of text, color, gradient, shadow, shape, and image you put down has a meaning, just like there are definitions for every
word.
A frequent issue I see with wireframes and prototypes is the variety of colors or
grayscale shades, line weights, font types, and element sizing or layout all without
much thought, if any. This adds confusion as you dont know whether these slight
variations should translate to variations in the end-product and, if so, what they will
communicate. Its as if someone did graphic design without a style guide, or someone spoke the English language without ever reading a page of the Oxford English
Dictionary.

Be consistent, not uniform

Wherever possible, use the same language and design patterns to help familiarize
users with your product. But, when this isnt possible, you should at least make sure
your underlying approach is consistent so your users can reasonably guess what
theyre supposed to do.
Presumably, you hope they use the product very often hourly, daily, or weekly
so youre helping them get comfortable doing so. Youre also helping them develop
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habits that will pay dividends down the road all while going about their daily lives.
Granted, you cant imagine every scenario and write rules for it like a design style
guide. Every circumstance is different and should be addressed on its own terms.
What unites things, therefore, should be a consistent approach one that users will
hopefully come to understand and trust.
As this pertains to sketching, wireframing and prototyping, its a valuable discipline
to limit the palette of shapes, colors, text, and graphics initially. This will help you be

Photo credit: wireframe working. baldiri. Creative Commons 2.0

consistent without being totally uniform (and arguably boring) or having too much
going on, which could be wildly confusing. As a rule of thumb, I always suggest
limiting each attribute (color, grayscale shades, text, elements, etc.) to 2-3 variations
so youre comparing apples to apples instead of wondering which variation is an
apple, and which one is something else could be an orange or a lemon. This will
result in a less sexy wireframe, but thats not the purpose of a wireframe leave
that for mockups and high-fidelity prototypes.
Whats nice about sketching is that you only have one color and font everywhere
until you physically decide to switch sketching tools (i.e. a thicker marker or a colored pencil). Similarly, wireframing tools also limit your options for line weight, color
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and font types. While wireframing and prototyping tools like UXPin give you more
flexibility, other tools like Balsamiq are extremely limiting for this precise reason.
Compared to graphic editing and presentation software, however, most wireframing
software will help you more with staying consistent throughout the design process.

Photo credit: Gradients. Damien Pollet. Creative Common 2.0

Low-fidelity doesnt mean unrealistic

When possible, add the details you know youll need, even if theyre rough approximations.
Its better than putting in arbitrary fillers you may change dramatically which will
ultimately change your design. One of the most common requests I get from designers when working together is content real content. In 50 Shades of Wireframing, I emphasized the value of having higher-fidelity for text, colors, media, and
interactions depending on which details will have the greatest impact on the overall
product design.
At my last company, I had to actually think about whether my product summary
paragraphs were going to be 3 or 6 lines long because the bulk of those paragraphs
may change the overall look, feel, and emphasis on the page given the existing
layout and, therefore, the layout would have to be re-considered for the product
design. If Im including product photos, I have to see the photos or at least an approximation before I can decide whether to include it, make it a primary feature
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or fight against it. The truth is that headings wrap, videos can be distracting or even
creepy, photo dimensions and orientations can be inconvenient, and decimals dont
creep out of their input boxes.
So scrap the Lorem Ipsum and get realistic about what youre trying to convey to
your users as early as possible.

Experiment & collaborate quickly

The best way to build effective products is to start small and iterate wildly. Iteration
reduces risk. It makes big failures unlikely and turns small failures into lessons. This
avoids the 200 page spec document which can turn into a bottleneck.
Low-fidelity design helps you and your team to explore many potential solutions
quickly before focusing in on one solution and polishing and refining it into the
final product. Initially, it may appear there are many solutions to a design challenge.
However, you can only decide which will work best after exploring a few of them
and laying them out in front of you to see, touch and feel. Inexperienced designers will over-commit to their initial ideas and fall in love with what is likely the wrong
solution good designers know better.
Ultimately, youre working in the wrong fidelity if you cant product concepts quickly. And youre wasting precious time if your wireframes are just grayscale versions
of a design you already have your heart set on. Use wireframing as a means to an
end, not the end itself.

Photo credit: Lorem Bokeh 1. Blake Burhart. Creative Commons 2.0

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Your designs will get built

A great design can be a terrible solution.
Remember that every animation, box, button, menu, modal window, photo gallery,
and map view needs to be programmed and you can draw a lot faster than anyone in the world can code. If you know HTML/CSS/JS, and youve seen what it takes
to test a page across every web browser, youll try to find an easier way to solve
your users problems when designing wireframes. Every project has budgetary, time,
and resource constraints, and you should internalize that with everything you add to
your wireframes, even little components there are no small changes, and theres a
trade-off for every decision you make.

Shipped is better than perfect

The goal of sketching, wireframing and prototyping is delivering great product concepts, not great deliverables.
Nobody cares if your deliverables are great if theyre not finished. And few will care
how perfect they are even if they are finished. The only people who may marvel at

Photo credit: IMG_8298. jeanbaptisteparis. Creative Commons 2.0.

the deliverables are the UX designers, but theyre hopefully too busy to care about
internal documentation. On the other hand, everyone wants or absolutely needs
you to communicate the right level of details about what they need to do to make a
great and feasible solution so they can ship better products, faster.
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If youve sketched something on scrap paper that youre confident is a solid solution
that everyone can act on immediately, theres no value in re-creating it in a wireframe or anywhere else. Just take a picture of it and share it where appropriate. In
some cases, you may have to quickly replicate it for organizational purposes, but
dont make deliverables for the sake of it you have better things to do.
In 4 Non-Digital Wireframing Weapons and 4 Digital Wireframing Weapons, I cover
a wide variety of tools you can use to get the job done.

Ready, set, wireframe!

Photo credit: uxpin.com

Ive done enough talking. And you need to get back to your product. So grab your
favorite tool, and keep some of these in mind as you ready for your next release.

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Everything you ever wanted

in a UX Design Platform

Complete prototyping framework for web and mobile

Collaboration and feedback for any team size
Lo-fi to hi-fi design in a single tool
Integration with Photoshop and Sketch

Start using it now!

www.uxpin.com