A great read, and one I'll be digging into in more detail internally. I also had the mindset of "wireframes save time" but recent experiences had me questioning if it was even worth it since not a lot of time was being saved. This article put my issue into words, especially on conflating wireframes and low fidelity work. The truth is lo-fi DOES save time, IF you're doing the right kind of work.
UX Researcher & Strategist, Inclusive Product Designer in Enterprise UX. Speaker, Author, Mentor & Teacher.
I usually stay away from the “to wireframe or not” debate, but I agree for once here with the message of Jason Barrons. Too often do wireframes become a black and white version of the final design that people expect the client to sign off on. I’ve been in situations BAs had a client validate a 10px font wireframe, and then complained that the mockup didn’t follow the guidelines once the visual designer applied the 16 px branded font. "But, we validated this layout with the client". This is kind of situation got ridiculous. When used like that, wireframes defeat the purpose of iterating in low fidelity, that tool was perverted over the years. Jason offers low fidelity alternatives, like UX state outlines, whiteboard sketching or “grey blocking”. Which I use a lot, while still calling those “low fidelity zone wireframe”. I personally would also add content modeling on the list; which is basically OOUX without all the fluff and branding around it. But, yeah bottom-line, thinking low fidelity helps a lot, and we need to stop with the pixel perfect sign of on wireframes idea. Those tools were never meant to be used that way. Stop wireframing (but still start low-fidelity) (12min) https://lnkd.in/e2p4y-Cz
