Users of a Wireframe

A wireframe is a planning document shared across a project team, not just used by the person who draws it. Several different people read the same wireframe, each for a slightly different reason, so the layout and the labelled links or actions between screens must be clear enough for all of them to follow.

User	What they get from the wireframe
Website designer	Plans the layout of each page and the navigation, so visitors can move between pages in a sensible order. For example, a designer mapping out the pages of a school summer fair site decides where the ticket button and the stall list sit.
Website developer	Builds the finished pages, so the wireframe shows which components are planned and where they sit. This helps them follow the planned layout rather than invent one.
UX designer	Checks the user journey: whether someone can find what they need, and whether each screen is easy to use. They read the links and actions to spot a confusing route before anyone builds it.
App designer	Plans the screens of an app, such as a swimming pool timetable app, and settles where the buttons and lists go.
App developer and app programmer	The app developer works out what must be built, and the app programmer turns each planned screen into a working one.

These users fall into two groups. Designers, UX designers and app designers plan with the wireframe; developers and programmers build from it. Both groups depend on the same thing: the intended layout, and the links or actions that connect one screen to the next, understood before production begins. That is why a wireframe is deliberately plain rather than a finished visual design, as covered in Components and Conventions of a Wireframe.

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