Short answer
A wireframe is a low-fidelity layout of a screen showing structure, hierarchy and content placement without colour, typography or imagery. Grey boxes and placeholder labels are deliberate: they keep a review about whether the checkout step belongs before or after account creation, rather than about the shade of the button.
Also called: Low-fidelity mockup, Wireframing
Wireframes sit between user flows and visual design, and most of their value comes from that position in the sequence. Moving a step in a wireframe takes minutes; moving it once the screens are designed costs a day; moving it after the feature is built costs a fortnight and someone’s patience. The cheapest place to be wrong is a grey rectangle.
The common mistake is skipping to polished mockups for the first review. Presented with typography, colour and real imagery, stakeholders comment on the surface, and a structural objection reads as criticism of the visual work, so it goes unsaid until later. Wireframes are disposable working documents; one that took a week to make beautiful has misunderstood its own purpose.
Where this comes up in our work
Related terms
Prototype
A prototype is a clickable simulation of a product that behaves enough like the real thing to be tested with users, while containing no working back end.
Discovery Phase
A discovery phase is a short, paid engagement that precedes a build and produces the artefacts a build needs: a written scope, user flows, a technical approach, and an estimate grounded in something other than a guess.
User Acceptance Testing (UAT)
User acceptance testing is the stage where the people who will actually use a system verify it against the agreed requirements before launch, working through real scenarios on a staging environment.
Product Roadmap
A product roadmap is a sequenced plan of what a product will do next and why, grouped by outcome rather than by feature list.
Reading definitions because you are scoping a project? Skip ahead and just ask.