DrawMatic

Why Wireframes Blow

Posted by Gavin Doughtie Tue, 17 Jan 2006 18:40:00 GMT

So, Jeffrey Zeldman posted today, complaining about Web 2.0 hype.

Who can blame him, really. I sat in the Web 2.0 conference last year. While it was fun to meet some of the recently and soon-to-be funded bright lights doing neat stuff right in your web browser, the VC crowd, beautiful and sharp, filled most sessions, seeking a score.

But Zeldman lumped in the damaging over-hype of the AJAX/Web 2.0 meme with what I would call a critical misjudgent about what Web 2.0 really is. Hey says,

“Wireframing AJAX is a bitch. The best our agency has come up with is the Chuck Jones approach: draw the key frames. Chuck Jones had an advantage: he knew what Bugs Bunny was going to do. We have to determine all the things a user might do, and wireframe the blessed moments of each possibility.”

To which I can only respond “welcome to my life.” My life being, in this case, that of an actual application software developer. Application users are not an “audience” that you can plan out a passive media consumption experience for. They’re using your software to accomplish a goal, to solve a point of personal pain, perhaps. I can’t imagine developers sitting around Microsoft going “what a pain in the ass it’s going to be creating a word processor for people… it’s like they could write anything!”

One of the things that makes Web 2.0 “different” is the idea of real software that runs well enough in your browser that the other applications you might use aren’t necessary, particularly when their connection to the Internet was implemented as an afterthought.

This is the sort of design that requires the kind of thinking taught in Alan Cooper’s “About Face”. It’s an entirely different discipline, and complaints that it’s difficult to wireframe for are simply off topic.