Wireframes for IA

What the heck is a wireframe?

Recently, someone asked me about wireframes. In short, wireframes are a low-cost, quick way to rough out the architecture of web sites, structured documents, document sets, training courseware, marketing collateral, web-based applications, and systems. Some other buzz words that may be used interchangeably (though not always correctly) with "wireframe" are low-fidelity mockup or rendering, schematic, page architecture, template, diagram, blueprint, or zone diagram. Grey model and story board also are used sometimes for procedure and task sequence mockups.

Wireframe techniques work for any sort of structured content. Think outline, but better. Wireframes can be used to convey many different aspects of architecture, but the data most often captured in wireframes are:

• Content at a high level
• Relationships among content
• Structure of content (innate hierarchy)
• Structure of relationships (structured hierarchy for presentation)
• Navigation and flow

Subject matter experts and information developers provide the content inventory, detailed content, user profiles, and use-case scenarios for a project. Using these and working with the SMEs and information developers, the information architect creates the site map and the wireframes. A wireframe is not intended to be a design document, but an overall snapshot of the architecture of a project and its content. The IA also works with the designer, who provides the design deliverables for the project. It is not unusual for an IA to take on the design role as well, but creation of the style guide, templates, page layouts, and other design considerations are separate from creation of the wireframes. Wireframes range from a very abstracted level, providing only high-level information, to extremely detailed, including content and intricate procedures.

Creating, reviewing, and amending wireframes does add work to a project. However, early (and frequent) wireframing and approval up front generally will save hours, if not days or weeks, of rework later. Wireframes can be created using a variety of tools, including PowerPoint, Word, Excel, FrameMaker, Visio, and custom tools provided for use with a particular development application.

One last thought: Don't mistake simple wireframes for simplistic ones. Some of the simplest wireframes are the most powerful. A simple and quick wireframe set can provide an early snapshot of a project's architecture, when it is still relatively easy and inexpensive to make changes. A widely-available tool (like PowerPoint) is accessible to almost everyone, everywhere, making it easy to distribute and review a set of wireframes. Distributing wireframes in PDFs or another universal format is also an alternative, and may enable the IA to use a custom wireframing tool.