Hi, I'm a graphic designer and have to design a Facebook app. I've been given the wireframes and just wonder how closely I'm supposed to stick to them as far as placement of elements and sizing of the UI elements?

Any help appreciated as am on a tight deadline with this and need to get cracking!

Wireframes are your guide to how the app appears and functions so you should use them for your design elements and styling/presentation. Remember that different devices use varying styles of UI elements (eg forms) so you'd need to take those sort of things into account.

I'd have thought as the designer and not just the developer you would have a lot of flexibility. Your job is to make it look good, function well and create a good user experience. You can't be expected to do that by sticking to wireframes that, I'd assume, haven't been designed by someone with a great knowledge of UX design. The wireframes will just show you what elements are needed and give you a basic structure.

If you've been handed wireframes you should probably ask the people you're creating the app for. If they hired a UX designer to make them, they probably want you to be pretty true to the wireframes. What we think you should do isn't relevant since we're not paying you.

 

As a UX designer, if I was to hand a wireframe off to a visual designer, I'd expect that the visual designer will use their best judgement to make the UI beautiful and make color/style choices that make it easier to understand, but the layout and relative size of elements shouldn't be changed much unless they have a very good reason to do so. Obviously they shouldn't be measuring the elements in Balsamiq (or what have you) and replicating in photoshop, but if a button is twice as large as another one, it should be in visual designs, too.

Edited August 30, 201214 yr by porkchops