Wireframes are a key stage in any digital design process that, when done right, can save your team a lot of resources. By getting your stakeholders aligned early and often on wireframes and user flow, your team can avoid usability issues, ensure all goals are met, and have a much easier go at creating a flawless user experience later on.
Wireframes come in all shapes, sizes, and levels of fidelity — and what works for your team may not work for someone else’s. They can be as simple as a quick sketch in your notebook or as thorough as a working prototype. But regardless of type(s) you choose, we know one thing all designers will be looking for: inspiration.
We collected some of our favorite wireframe examples published on Dribbble in the last year to share with you, so you can take your designs to the next level in the new year.
1. Mobile Flowchart by Den Klenkov for Fireart Studio
This mobile wireframe is for a bill-splitting app that makes it easy to scan and split bills between friends.
The user flow is easy to read and understand thanks to the limited color palette and easily-recognizable icons and shapes.
And this user even shared a full case study on creating this app, which you can read here, where you can see these beautiful wireframes transform into a finished product.
2. Upshift — wireframe by Michał Roszyk for tonik
This wireframe was created for a usage-based car subscription startup looking to redesign and standardize their digital presence.
The use of white space and a clear visual hierarchy makes it easy to quickly scan and digest.
3. Aptible Wireframe by Focus Lab in Aptible
This example provides both the high-def wireframe and actual site when it was released.
Early wireframing on this project ensured that the finished project wasn’t too far off from the original wireframes.
4. Bradfield — Wireframe by Michał Nowakowski for tonik
This redesign of the Bradfield Computer Science School includes wireframes for the landing page, subpages, and short enrollment form.
With beautiful overlays and clear architecture, this wireframing does a great job at organizing a lot of information with overwhelming visually.
5. Loan App Wireframes by Ryszard Cz
These hi-fi wireframes are for an app that helps people looking for new forms of their purchase financing.
Fitting a lot of info into a mobile screen is tricky, but this user managed to make the most useful information easy to find and engage with.
6. Wireframes by Corey Haggard for Mossio
These are an example of some first draft wireframes created right at the start of a project.
This wireframe uses a variety of layout techniques for different types of information without adding too much clutter.
7. Laser Components / Wireframe by Andrew Larin
This site wireframe for innovative laser equipment keeps things simple and sleek.
Text-heavy websites aren’t always the easiest to design for, but this wireframe keeps things looking sharp.
8. A clean finance, banking or crypto, wallet app ui / ux design by michael henning
This finance app wireframe incorporates colors and some graphics to give a better feel for the final product.
While there were probably even earlier wireframe stages of this design, it’s fun to see how designs can start to take shape even while still in the wireframing phase.
9. Groundwork by Shabnam Gideon for Focus Lab
This annotated hi-fi wireframe shows how this team documents content sources and reuse rules.
Pretty layouts and clear calls to action are great, but without proper annotations, the rest of your team could get lost interpreting your work. This popular wireframe is a great reminder of the importance of useful annotations.
10. UX Design Process by Michael Pons in Real Estate SaaS Ecosystem
This example captures wireframes throughout the design process, from sketches to user flows to mockups.
Seeing how wireframes fit into the larger picture of a project is incredibly useful, and it would be great to see more users being so thorough when they share their work.
11. Petals by Prateek Saini (PS) for Nickelfox
This mobile app is for a large flower supplier, and the app allows you to purchase their plants online.
These wireframes have already applied some use of color based on the companies branding, but this is clearly still early stages. Being able to clearly read and interpret user flow is especially important in any purchasing-focused app.
12. App’s Wireframe & Userflow for Fast KYC by ROHIT BIND for RentoMoj
The wireframe screens of this mobile app walk users through setting up their profile to receive deliveries.
Again, we can look at not only the beautiful layouts and clear hierarchy in these designs, but the thought-through user flow.
Final thoughts
Whether you’re creating a freehand sketch, a mobile app mockup, or full website design, collaboration and early feedback are the keys to wireframing success. With the right inspiration, templates, enthusiastic buy-in, and thought through user-flow, your final product will be infinitely easier to create.
For more on wireframing, be sure to check out Cacoo’s Wireframe Guide where we walk through the entire wireframe design process, including best-practices, advanced tips, rules for collaborating, and more.
And don’t forget, when your site or app is ready for design and looking for an interesting infographic to really make things pop, try Venngage.
The author:
Brandi is a Content Marketing Manager at Nulab — the creators of Cacoo, the collaborative diagramming app for teams. She regularly contributes and edits content for all of Nulab’s websites and blogs.
