Wireframe

A bare-bones visual sketch of a screen or flow, showing layout and structure without colors, styling, or real content. The blueprint before the design.

Why it matters

Wireframes let you agree on structure and flow cheaply, before anyone spends time on polish. Debating a wireframe is far cheaper than reworking a finished design or, worse, shipped code.

For example

Before design, the team sketches a grey-box wireframe of the dashboard to agree on layout, so no one wastes time polishing the wrong structure.

Related terms

Prototype User Journey Product Discovery

Go deeper

See how founders actually handle this on Building the product, part of the Starting Up hub.

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