I was reading The Guided Wireframe Narrative for Rich Internet Applications Case Study: Prototyping Complex Interactions by Andres Zapata on Boxes and Arrows and within the text was this question:

Why continue using wireframes? At all?

Sometimes my coworkers and I struggle with this same question. Since I often find myself arguing in defense of wireframes, I found the answer noteworthy:

Wireframes are our friends because they are:

• Familiar. We know how to make them, clients know how to read them.
• Cheap. It takes a lot less money to put together ten screens in wireframes than in HTML.
• Quick. Producing wireframes in Visio (or something similar) is simply faster than hacking at HTML.
• Understood. If you can click on it, then people expect it to work. Wireframes are generally not expected to ?¢‚Ǩ?ìwork?¢‚Ǩ¬ù ?¢‚Ǩ‚Äú affording a higher tolerance for discovery and strategy.

The point I like the most is the last. Clients do have a tendency to expect something to work if the prototype looks like it should work?¢‚Ǩ‚Äùas with HTML. If the wireframes don’t look like they work, you can focus on discovery and strategy.