Use Sharpies to keep your wireframes messy

You may know that I'm a fan of using Sharpies for wireframing layouts instead of specialty wireframing apps like Balsamiq or Mockingbird. I stated several reasons for my Sharpie affections a couple weeks ago in a post called Cheap, powerful desktop and mobile wireframing tools.

This time I want to hone in on one major benefit to using Sharpies for your initial wireframes. Messiness.

Cheap, powerful desktop and mobile wireframe tools

There are a lot of wireframe tools floating around. Just Google "top wireframe tools list" and you'll see what I mean.

Most wireframe tools have taken a simple concept (illustrating the general layout and flow of an application or website) and made it a complicated mess. This is a perfect example of features getting in the way of a simple job to be done.

I've tried a dozen or so wireframe tools, from Keynote to Balsamiq, and the best tool I've found for making wireframes on the desktop is still my trusted Sharpie. It's cheap, powerful, mobile, and comes in many colors. Here's what you can do with a Sharpie:

How to bring content design back into your UX design process

Content design isn't necessarily part of an aspiring web developer's immediate learning plan, but getting a sense for other disciplines in your industry will make you a more well-rounded developer. And since you should be learning UX design anyway, it's good to know this stuff. For the purposes of this post, content refers primarily to copy, not other content elements like images or icons.

UX design has been overly deconstructed to its basic parts; wireframes, mind maps, and user stories. The role of content in UX design has been lost, left to the last item on the todo list before a website ships. Content managers have been relegated to mere copywriters, pumping out words like widgets in a factory. It's no wonder business writing sucks.