Website Wireframe
A website wireframe, also known as a page schematic or screen blueprint, is a visual guide that represents the skeletal framework of a website. The wireframe depicts the page layout or arrangement of the website’s content, including interface elements and navigational systems, and how they work together. The wireframe usually lacks typographic style, colour, or graphics, since the main focus lies in functionality, behavior, and priority of content. In other words, it focuses on “what a screen does, not what it looks like.
The website wireframe connects the underlying conceptual structure, or information architecture, to the surface, or visual design of the website. Wireframes help establish functionality, and the relationships between different screen templates of a website. An iterative process, creating wireframes is an effective way to make rapid prototypes of pages, while measuring the practicality of a design concept. Wireframing typically begins between “high-level structural work—like flowcharts or site maps—and screen designs.” Within the process of building a website, wire framing is where thinking becomes tangible.
Elements of wireframes
The skeleton plan of a website can be broken down into three components: information design, navigation design, and interface design. Page layout is where these components come together, while wireframing is what depicts the relationship between these components.
Information design: Information design is the presentation—placement and prioritization of information in a way that facilitates understanding. Information design is an area of graphic design, meant to display information effectively for clear communication. For websites, information elements should be arranged in a way that reflects the goals and tasks of the user.
Navigation design: The navigation system provides a set of screen elements that allow the user to move page to page through a website. The navigation design should communicate the relationship between the links it contains so that users understand the options they have for navigating the site. Often, websites contain multiple navigation systems such as a global navigation, local navigation, supplementary navigation, contextual navigation, and courtesy navigation.
Interface design: User interface design includes selecting and arranging interface elements to enable users to interact with the functionality of the system. The goal is to facilitate usability and efficiency as much as possible. Common elements found in interface design are action buttons, text fields, check boxes, radio buttons and drop-down menus.
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