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 ??????work?????? ??????? 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???????as with HTML. If the wireframes don’t look like they work, you can focus on discovery and strategy.