A Step-By-Step Guide to Designing Mobile App Wireframes in 2021
If you’re looking to better understand mobile app wireframes and searching how to wireframe an app? Get to the beginner’s guide to develop wireframe app design from scratch!
What if humans didn’t have bones? We couldn’t even stand or walk. The same happens with applications. Wireframes are app skeletal frameworks for any application, which play a vital role in product development.
If you are a business analyst or UX/UI designer, wireframing is not a foreign term. I am sure, you must have spent hours creating black and white boxes using your pencil and paper.
But, if you are new to product designing and have a rough idea of what a mobile app wireframe is and what objective does it serve, you’ve landed at the right place. The article covers step by step how you can make a wireframe for your app.
Before jumping into the wireframe development process, let’s quickly understand what does the mobile app wireframes for mobile apps show?
What is Mobile App Wireframing?
Product wireframing is a rough sketch or screen blueprint, which enables UI/UX designers to visualize how the product will work. Wireframes for apps are more about how the product will function or how the feature will work, whereas prototypes are more about what the product will appear, which includes images, graphics, colors, animations, and the actual content that will be on or in your product.
5 Steps To Create A User-centric Wireframe For Your Mobile App
Mobile wireframe app designing is a multi-step process. Here’re the clear steps to create a wireframe for your mobile app.
- Map out a target audience
- Create first mobile wireframe draft
- Use UX templates
- Build minimalistic app wireframe layout
- Create low fidelity prototypes
- Do testing!
- Map out a target audience
This should be the first step in creating a mobile wireframe, before touching your pencil. Begin your wireframing journey by defining a target audience based on demographic details (age, gender, location, income, etc.) and user behavior.
Do some research on buyer personas, define use-cases, and best practices to analyze who you are building this app for, and why?
Another thing, you should be clear about what problems your app is intended to solve? If you’re adding some new feature to your app, a user flow map will help.
The user flow map is a series of pages, steps, and actions that will help you visualize the number of screens required to perform a certain action in the app.
Before writing anything on paper, it is important to analyze the total number of frames/ screens required to achieve the specific goal.
Furthermore, you can download similar apps to identify opportunities for feature enhancement over your competitors. It will help you to develop an idea about the user journey before sketching an app wireframe of your app.
2. Create your first draft
The next step is drafting your app wireframe. Don’t get confused between wireframing and prototyping, both are completely different from each other. Wireframing is an early-stage process focused on creating low-fidelity sketches of your application, which talks more about how the app functions, while prototypes are high-fidelity structures, which are more about creating advanced wireframes for apps with more visual details.
In addition to this, if you hire a good app design company, they can help you with graphics, templates, content, style guides, and of course, mobile wireframes and prototypes.
Creating a wireframe begins with creating the first draft, which determines how a user will interact with your app and how they will use it. This should include features, functions, purposes, number of screens, etc.
You can use a pen or pencil to draw app variations by outlining content types, and buttons that users can use to perform certain actions. And delete what’s less important.
3. Use Ready-to-use Mobile UX templates
When you’re creating a cross-platform app, then you need to create separate wireframes for Android and iOS, which takes a lot of time and is not an economical option also. Creating iPhone wireframes is way tough as compared to Androids. You can begin with taking visual references using a mobile app wireframe template. The pre-defined UI mockups & UX wireframe templates simplify your work and save your time.
The UX kit contains drag and drop elements and several ready-to-use mobile app wireframe templates that help to build apps more quickly. It helps you create and build complex projects in a matter of minutes. Hence, making it easier for stakeholders to understand the flow of the app. Furthermore, you can also use wireframing tools to create app wireframe online free.
4. Create a minimalistic layout
Once you get to this step, you are well aware of what your app will contain and how it will work. Now, the next step is sketching out the core of your product wireframe and deciding what elements are going to be in your wireframe. The purpose of this step is to make an app’s basic skeletal structure that includes text boxes, tabs, multimedia, etc., to show a transition between screens.
No need to add fonts, colors, or any details, just focus on the basic structure of your app and focus on making connections between pages together to create flow instead of thinking about UI.
At this stage, the deliverables are app screens, user journey maps, content modules (links, potential images, buttons), space distribution, and app screen variations.
5. Build low-fidelity prototypes
Now, the user flow is decided, a basic wireframe has been created. The next step is adding some details from left to right, and top to bottom to the app. The move aims to create a low-fidelity prototype for customers, stakeholders, investors to understand the functionality of the app.
When representing multiple concepts or variations, be sure to add more app usability details and check app navigation to make mobile app wireframes more interactive. For designing a low-fidelity prototype, you can use tools such as InVision, Figma, Axure RP, Adobe XD, and Marvel. This way, you can create an app wireframe online free.
What to include?
- Rough layouts, mainly boxes, and lines
- Little to no specific details
- No sense of scale, pixels, or grid
6. Add details, do testing, and done!
Now, with all the details in place, it’s time to test your wireframe on a real basis. Make sure the content is in its place, check all screen transitions and other necessary details. You can add other team members and SMEs (Subject Matter Experts) to make sure you are not missing anything.
Here is how you can check your app wireframe:
- Bring the actual copy of your wireframe to send them to review.
- Before interviewing SMEs, prepare a questionnaire beforehand, to gauge their experience and record feedback.
- You can do user testing as well.
- You can also use wireframe testing tools to carry out interactive wireframe testing and record feedback simultaneously.
And the app wireframe is ready!
These are the essential steps on how to wireframe an app. The user journey is decided, app functions are defined, and screen transitions are fixed. Typically, a medium app wireframe requires at least 30 working hours to prepare a wireframe, which includes its creation, discussions, and testing. If you want to learn more technical aspects of mobile app design, you can visit MobileAppDaily to get more insightful information. You can also hire top app development companies for mobile app wireframing and cost-effective app development
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