Traditional wireframe layouts are distracting because they say both too little and too much. They say too little in the sense that civilians often have a hard time imagining how those squiggles will actually look as a website: “Sure, I guess that’s fine, but I’ll need to see the whole thing to know for sure.” (In other words: “you’ll need to design the website before I can approve this wireframe.”)

Wireframes also say too much. Despite their abstraction, wireframes create expectations for what the layout should be before the layout expert—the UI designer—even starts work. The whole intention of wireframes is to put the focus on content hierarchy instead of visual design, yet the very fact that they embed layout undercuts that mission.