When designing is all about iteration many people don’t have the basic tools to help them iterate better and faster. A wireframe toolkit is a must-have for anyone looking to speed up their workflow. A wireframing toolkit—a collection of low fidelity generic user interface (UI) elements that are commonly used in an app or website—is the lego pieces your apps or software products are built upon. With these lego pieces, you can scaffold your project, focusing on function and layout before you are ready to apply more specific design treatments like color and font.

For example, most apps use text input fields to authenticate users (aka your username and password). If you have a wireframing tool kit you can add generic text input fields into your designs as you experiment with layouts. That way you’re not recreating this common element, over and over again.

That example alone may have convinced you of the need for a wireframing toolkit and you may be tempted to stop reading to google “wireframing kit”. A quick google search will show tons of kits available for you to download. As tempting as it may be to download someone else’s toolkit, I strongly advise against it. I’ve done this in the past many times and found myself spending more time editing the toolkit instead of creating the design I downloaded it for. Learn from my mistake. The goal is to save time. So it’s better to build your own. Now while you shouldn’t use someone else’s toolkit for your designs, you CAN use others’ kits as guides to build your own.

Since we are on the subject of learning from my mistakes, remember your kit is a collection of building blocks. These wireframes are not intended to be the final design. They are simply elements to get you started with and help iterate on layout and functionality. If the final design closely resembles the wireframe component in your kit then all of your designs will end up looking the same no matter the project. Now, this might not be a problem if you’re only working on one product in your lifetime. However, let’s assume you will have many products or clients to design for,  in which case you have to ensure that one brand is distinctive enough from others. Having the building blocks will give a base and you can design product-specific designs from there. 

Building a wireframe toolkit will pay dividends in the long run. You will immediately appreciate your toolkit simply based on the time you save moving forward. And if you build your own toolkit, instead of downloading one from Google, you’ll also have intimate knowledge of all the components which means using and updating it will be easy. So treat yourself to a faster workflow by building your own wireframe toolkit.