what is the best document size for wireframes?

Question

i need to prepare some user journey flows and wireframes for a mobile application. Omnigraffle is my tool of choice. the wireframes are intended to be presented digitally, as PDF. i will eventually need to import them into an InDesign document which contains A4 Landscape pages.

the question is: what would be the best document/canvas size to use in Omnigraffle, so when i later import the materials to InDesign, things will remain proportional and easily read? i am mostly concerned about text/font size.

for example, in one occasion i am using one of Konigi's UX templates (http://konigi.com/tools/omnigraffle-ux-template). when imported to an InDesign, and scaled down to fit an A4 Landscape document, text gets tiny and barely readable.

any suggestions?

Answer 1

I would say it depends on who is going to view your deliverables.

1. If the person going to view the proposed wireframe is just looking at it from the perspective of trying to understand the general elements which are going to be in the design and is not concerned about the relative sizing and fonts being used,then a rough wireframe drawn on a sheet of paper can serve the purpose.

2. However if you are going to present your wireframes to a client or even a manager who wants to look at it from a design perspective and see what all elements are going to be there and how they fit into the screen and what would be the relative sizing, I would recommend going as close to the size specifications of the form factor you are going to be designing for.

In either cases, I would recommend sticking as close as possible to the actual size since it gives a better frame of reference to the design. The size of the document will depend on the viewing device you have but there is no rule which says that you need to utilize all of the space and you can always utilize the remaining space on the document page for showing inputs and user flow or a secondary wireframe. Here is an example of a wireframe which has been translated into a pdf.

The key thing to note here is that we tried to keep the eventual wireframe specifications as close to the final design (in terms of screen usage and fonts) and utilized the available screen space in the document for adding additional notes.

Answer 2

For the most part, digital wireframes are more useful both for designing and for documentation. However if you need to have them on paper, the chances are that they are needed for archiving or for reviewing. In that case, I would recommend sticking to whatever the standard paper size is wherever you are.

That is typically Letter or A4.