Wireframes are dead. Long live wireframes.

My good friend and colleague Dan Ritzenthaler has written Wireframes: A good communication tool, a poor design tool, an article that captures his insights on a lot of the conversations we’ve had lately at HubSpot.

Dan is not dismissive of wireframes, but he doesn’t think they’re a good design tool. Instead, Dan says that wireframes are better characterized as a communication tool, a sentiment I agree with:

“A wireframe is good for gathering and consolidating the design thinking—the conversations and sketches—that has already occurred. Wireframes are good at opening up avenues of communication and spurring useful feedback. They can help you obtain someone’s approval, or move a project on to its next phase. Emails, contracts, and specifications also provide this kind of value. I like to call it “paperwork.”