The Oracle Applications User Experience team's Day in the Life (DITL) of User Experience (UX) event was run in Oracle's Redwood Shores HQ for Oracle Usability Advisory Board (OUAB) members. I was charged with putting together a wireframing session, together with Director of Financial Applications User Experience, Scott Robinson (@scottrobinson).

Example of stunning new wireframing visuals we used on the DITL events.

We put on a lively show, explaining the basics of wireframing, the concepts, what it is and isn't, considerations on wireframing tool choice, and then imparting some tips and best practices. But the real energy came when the OUAB customers and partners in the room were challenge to do some wireframing of their own.

Wireframing is about bringing your business and product use cases to life in real UX visual terms, by creating a low-fidelity drawing to iterate and agree on in advance of prototyping and coding what is to be finally built and rolled out for users. All the best people wireframe.

Leonardo da Vinci used "cartoons" on some great works, tracing outlines first and using red ochre or charcoal dropped through holes in the tracing parchment onto the canvas to outline the subject. (Image distributed under Wikimedia commons license)

Wireframing an application's user experience design enables you to:

• Obtain stakeholder buy-in.
  
• Enable faster iteration of different designs.
  
• Determine the task flow navigation paths (in Oracle Fusion Applications navigation is linked with user roles).
  
• Develop a content strategy (readability, search engine optimization (SEO) of content, and so on)
  
• Lay out the pages, widgets, groups of features, and so on.
  
• Apply usability heuristics early (no replacement for usability testing, but a great way to do some heavy-lifting up front).
  
• Decide upstream which functional user experience design patterns to apply (out of the box solutions that expedite productivity).
  
• Assess which Oracle Application Development Framework (ADF) or equivalent technology components can be used (again, developer productivity is enhanced downstream).
  

We ran a lively hands-on exercise where teams wireframed a choice of application scenarios using the time-honored tools of pen and paper. Scott worked the floor like a pro, pointing out great use of features, best practices, innovations, and making sure that the whole concept of wireframing, the gestalt, transferred.

"We need more buttons!" The cry of the energized. Not quite. The winning wireframe session (online shopping scenario) from the Applications UX DITL event shown.

Great fun, great energy, and great teamwork were evident in the room. Naturally, there were prizes for the best wireframe. Well, actually, prizes were handed out to the other attendees too!

An exciting, slightly different aspect to delivery of this session made the wireframing event one of the highlights of the day. And definitely, something we will repeat again when we get the chance.

Thanks to everyone who attended, contributed, and helped organize.