A couple of years ago I realised that a lot of my IT, non-designer, friends were using the names of my beloved design deliverables synonymously. They assumed that a wireframe, prototype and mockup are exactly the same thing – a kind of greyish, boxy, sketch representing an ingenious idea. The problem with their simplified view is that they never know what to expect from the work of User Experience designers and they often get confused. ”Why the hell is this not clickable?”, ”Well, I didn’t know that I was supposed to click here…” – these kind of comments are annoyingly common in UX design projects. Though you may certainly try to live in a display house (you know – its beauty is supposed to demonstrate how cool other houses in the area are), you can’t count on a comfortable stay in a blueprint – it’s just a sheet of paper. A display house and a blueprint are different means of communication in architecture: - a blueprint serves as a building plan and should specify how the building should be built - a display house provides a test drive for future residents The same differentiation can be applied to wireframes, prototypes and mockups. They look different, they communicate something different and they serve different purposes. A display house and blueprint do have something in common though – they both represent the final product – actual house. And again exactly the same common trait can be applied to wireframes, prototypes and mockups – all these documents are forms of representation of the final product. Believe it or not, the difference between a prototype, wireframe and mockup was always one of the first things I tried to teach members of my User Experience Design team. Yes, it’s really that important. Let’s discuss wireframes, prototypes and mockups in detail, so you’ll grasp the idea of what to use in specific situations.