In musical theatre, there’s a general philosophy about when and why a performer decides to sing and like UX design, it’s all about communication. When a performer becomes too excited to speak, they sing. When they get too excited to sing, they dance. Their level of communication heightens to meet their level of expression because the previous was holding them back.

As UX designers, we have similar obstacles in how we communicate. When words aren’t effective, we user flow. When user flows aren’t effective, we wireframe. When wireframes aren’t effective, we low/high fidelity.

The objective of wireframes is either concept validation or communicating with others on your team. For concept validation, drawing works great for quick idea germination. For communicating with others, I upgrade to wireframes only when user flows hold me back. Both these processes should be fast and ugly.