Digital vs. physical wireframing mediums - Figma教程

- [Instructor] What is a wireframe? In simple words, a wireframe is like the skeleton of a product. Think of it as blueprints. Architects and engineers prepare a blueprint of a building or a space before building the final structure. Similarly, we as UX designers build wireframes to understand the usability before building the final product. Wireframes essentially are a crucial part of the design thinking process because they help us in identifying opportunities and constraints. In this video, we will understand the difference between paper wireframing and digital wireframing, and also learn to leverage the method of sketching from paper wireframing to brainstorm more ideas. Do you know how wireframes and prototypes were created before we had all the advanced design softwares? Teams used paper, pencil, and stencil, a very convenient way to develop wireframes and prototypes. Paper wireframes are flexible to iterate, since you don't include a lot of details. Besides, stencils made the iterations easier to create repetitive components and icons. And lastly, sketching is the best way to brainstorm, and gives a lot of freedom to creativity. Hence, as a designer, sketching ideas is essential for any design process. However, the disadvantages of paper wireframing could make a huge impact on the final product. This method is time consuming because of the time taken in trying to be accurate in the development of prototypes. Because these prototypes are not detailed enough, testing these paper prototypes can give inaccurate test results. Lastly, the limited interactivity of paper prototypes. We simply cannot incorporate interactivity that matches the level of responsive applications. Let's talk about digital wireframes. As designers, today we are very fortunate to have advanced tools and softwares at our disposal. With softwares like Figma, Adobe XD, Sketch, etcetera, available to us, it has become even more fun and easy to make quick iterations of designs. Unlike paper prototypes, these softwares have also become a great tool for team collaboration, which is key to designing great products. Digital wireframes and prototypes also offer prebuilt templates. We have components that we can copy and paste on multiple screens, we have tools to pick colors, and we can also collaborate and share our prototype virtually with the rest of the team. Now we know why the industry is rapidly moving towards the digital prototypes using advanced softwares. But let's not forget our humble beginnings of sketching, which is a great way to increase creativity and also make rapid iterations at early stage brainstorming. So if you find the step of designing your ideas very daunting, using the paper and pencil method is going to be a great way to get started with your ideas in a physical form.