welterweightUX

Over the past month, I’ve been working on a pile of wireframes that have a somewhat precarious purpose.

They aren’t tied to the future design of a specific website. Instead, they’re meant to give our internal teams a sense of features they’ll be able to pick from and implement on their individual sites in the future.

Kind of like a menu at a restaurant.

Scaremongering
There is an inherent danger with wireframes. Or, rather, in presenting wireframes. It has to do with how things like size, scope, and verbiage are interpreted by stakeholders. These things are often interpreted as being carved in stone. Like they’ll be the permanent artifacts of a brand. Corporate cave drawings that will linger on forever.

For this reason, it is obvious that we need to be as careful as possible when composing wireframes. Duh.

But we need to be even more careful when presenting them.

How to present wireframes well
During wireframe presentations, even just spelling out expectations properly before you dive in to the guts of the frames isn’t enough.

Go into these meetings with utmost patience. Know that your biggest obstacle will be steering conversations back when they inevitably veer toward “Well, why does this box look like this…?” Over and over again.

This is hard enough when creating wireframes that drive design. But if you’re like me and creating a site “menu”, you’ll need to be even more nurturing to your clients.

Trampoline tactics
It’s best during a meeting to periodically remind everyone that what they’re looking at isn’t literal. And it’s changeable.

If someone keeps returning to the whys, a good tactic is to revisit an earlier example. Say something like: “Great questions. But this is kind of like the XYZ that we discussed earlier. It’s just representing the fact that XYZ will exist on the page. We can delve further into the details when we begin talking about design in a few weeks.”

Confusion is ok to start
Subtle visuals will obliterate even the most carefully architected information scheme. Be ok with this. Be gentle. Eventually everyone the electrified by clarity and it will be awesome.