Young and Brilliant: Wireframes for Thinking

“wireframes” or “sketches” (the semantics aren’t important here) are really like writing out long division. If you’re trying to think seriously about a software product, if you aren’t sketching things out, then you aren’t really thinking about it. Yes, some details are inane (“Where should I put the login button?”) but many more are the details that make up the service: Tumblr linking to its six basic post types wasn’t a detail, it markedly effected the way the service felt and was used. And these are the little details that we start to see once we can start externalizing bits of our short-term memory to paper.

As an even more general point, I’d say that confidence and fluency in sketching and diagraming is one of those things that can make us exponentially better thinkers.

I love this and agree 100%. Sometimes I use paper and other times I use software, but if you’re not writing it out in some way, you’re not thinking about it.