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To play the devil's advocate: I've been given rough wireframes without color before, where we didn't have enough time to add color later on. The feedback from c

To play the devil's advocate: I've been given rough wireframes without color before, where we didn't have enough time to add color later on. The feedback from customer was that the design looked unfriendly and out of touch with the rest of the product. Then again - it might have been because I was unfamiliar with frontend coding, or that we didn't really go past the wireframes stage.

GuiA 8y ago
Wireframes are not deliverables! Your client has no more business seeing them than they have seeing the random diagrams/pseudocode your programmers are whiteboarding as they build out the infrastructure of the product. Clients are typically not designers, and when you show them anything visual, they will see and judge it as a design standing on its own, and not as an intermediary part of your process. Anything that is seen by the client is a deliverable and should receive the utmost amount of polish and attention. As a designer/engineer/someone who makes things, you may be able to mentally fill in the blanks or visualize what the finished product might look like based on wireframes, diagrams, etc. Your client cannot, and showing them non deliverables will only muddy the conversation. Just to make it clear - I am not advocating working in obscurity for months, not giving the clients anything, and then giving them the finished product on a silver platter - this is just as bad. You should absolutely be delivering regularly, getting feedback from the client on the deliverables, and iterating that way. But everything that you give the client is something that stands on its own, not a wireframe that you introduce by awkwardly saying "well, we didn't have time to add color, but just imagine...".
- tobr 8y ago
  You can’t exactly have it both ways, though? Either you involve the client and the client’s clients in iterations, which means they must occasionally see nasty, inconsistent, less than half-finished sketches, or you waste most of their money making the wrong concepts look nice. There’s nothing awkward about not using color. It’s smart and makes you focus on the right stuff in most of the design process. That’s something any reasonable client will understand perfectly well.

GuiA 8y ago

Wireframes are not deliverables! Your client has no more business seeing them than they have seeing the random diagrams/pseudocode your programmers are whiteboarding as they build out the infrastructure of the product. Clients are typically not designers, and when you show them anything visual, they will see and judge it as a design standing on its own, and not as an intermediary part of your process. Anything that is seen by the client is a deliverable and should receive the utmost amount of polish and attention. As a designer/engineer/someone who makes things, you may be able to mentally fill in the blanks or visualize what the finished product might look like based on wireframes, diagrams, etc. Your client cannot, and showing them non deliverables will only muddy the conversation. Just to make it clear - I am not advocating working in obscurity for months, not giving the clients anything, and then giving them the finished product on a silver platter - this is just as bad. You should absolutely be delivering regularly, getting feedback from the client on the deliverables, and iterating that way. But everything that you give the client is something that stands on its own, not a wireframe that you introduce by awkwardly saying "well, we didn't have time to add color, but just imagine...".

tobr 8y ago
You can’t exactly have it both ways, though? Either you involve the client and the client’s clients in iterations, which means they must occasionally see nasty, inconsistent, less than half-finished sketches, or you waste most of their money making the wrong concepts look nice. There’s nothing awkward about not using color. It’s smart and makes you focus on the right stuff in most of the design process. That’s something any reasonable client will understand perfectly well.