The process of designing a new mobile application is collaborative, yet there’s one point where the partnership often breaks down: the wireframe review.

When a designer presents a set of wireframes (the grayscale skeletons of your future app) to stakeholders who aren’t trained in UX, the feedback often defaults to aesthetics. You hear things like, “The text is too small,” or “I don’t like this color,” or “Can we use a cooler font?”

The problem? Wireframes are deliberately stripped of aesthetics. Giving feedback on colors, fonts, or iconography at this stage is like commenting on the paint job of a building when the architect is asking you to check the foundation blueprints. It’s premature, non-actionable, and distracts the team from the wireframe’s true purpose: validating the app’s flow and functionality.

If you’re a product owner, developer, or stakeholder without a design background, your feedback is crucial, but it needs to be channeled correctly. This guide outlines the essential, non-technical trick for providing feedback that dramatically improves the final product without wasting development time.

The Wireframe’s Core Purpose: Not How It Looks, But How It Works

Before you open that Figma file or look at that PDF, you need to recalibrate your mindset.

What a Wireframe Actually Is (and Isn’t)

A wireframe is a low-fidelity blueprint. It uses basic shapes, lines, and placeholder text to define three things:

1. Content Priority: What information appears on the screen.
2. Screen Layout: Where the elements are spatially placed.
3. Interaction Design: How a user moves between screens to complete a task.

It is not a visual mockup, a final design, or a finished product. It shouldn’t look pretty, and that’s intentional. By removing visual distractions, the team forces themselves and reviewers to focus purely on the structure and interaction logic.

Shifting the Mindset: From “Is it pretty?” to “Does it flow?”

The goal of your review is not to judge the design; it’s to test the hypothesis of the design. Every wireframe is a proposed solution to a specific user problem. As a reviewer, you need to answer only one question: Does this proposal successfully guide the user toward solving their problem?

Forget white space, alignment, and button sizes. Focus solely on the links, the labels, the steps, and the overall journey.

The “Trick”: User Scenarios and The Single-Focus Question

The single most effective tool a non-designer can use to review wireframes is the User Scenario Audit. Instead of reviewing the screens as static images, you need to actively become the user and attempt to complete a specific, real-world task.

Step 1: Define the Scenario (The “Job to Be Done”)

Identify a core task the user will perform in the app. Be specific and define the starting point and the end goal.

• Bad Scenario: “Log in.” (Too basic, doesn’t test the main features.)
• Better Scenario: “As a new user, I need to sign up, search for ‘hiking boots,’ and save three pairs to a new wishlist called ‘Summer Gear.’”
• Best Scenario: “A returning user hasn’t opened the app in three weeks. They need to locate their last order details and initiate a return for one item.”

Step 2: Test the Human-Centric Path

Now, you execute the scenario step-by-step, clicking or navigating exactly where the wireframe dictates. This is where your unique, non-design perspective offers the most value. You’re not tainted by design theory; you are the user trying to get a job done efficiently.

As you test, you are validating whether the design truly puts the user’s needs first. At Hooman Studio, for instance, a core development philosophy involves constantly reviewing solutions to ensure they deliver streamlined, user-centric experiences that minimize cognitive load and eliminate friction for the end-user. The aim is to build things right the first time by scrutinizing the experience at the foundational wireframe stage. You are essentially adopting this methodology: testing the solution’s humanity.

Step 3: Ask the Killer Question: “Where Did I Get Stuck?”

Every single time you pause, hesitate, or re-read a label, you have found a design problem. Your feedback shouldn’t be, “The label for this field is confusing.” It should be:

• “I paused for five seconds at the checkout screen because I was looking for the ‘Add Promo Code’ link, and it wasn’t obvious. I eventually found it nested under the subtotal.”
• “I was trying to cancel a subscription, and after clicking ‘Settings,’ I couldn’t immediately tell if it was under ‘Account,’ ‘Billing,’ or ‘Privacy.’ I had to click two different sections to find it.”

This type of feedback is golden because it grounds the abstract design problem in a measurable behavioral failure. You aren’t judging; you are reporting data.

Structuring Your Feedback for Actionable Results

The quality of your feedback is determined by how easily the design team can act on it. Use the following format to ensure your observations translate into tangible improvements.

The Problem-Solution-Severity Format

For every point of friction you identify using the User Scenario Audit, structure your comment like this:

Component	Description	Example
1. Scenario/Location:	State the specific task and where the failure occurred.	“Scenario: Returning a purchased item. Location: Order Details Screen.”
2. Observation (The Problem):	Describe what happened (your behavior) and why it was difficult. Avoid blaming the design.	“When trying to select a return reason, I didn’t see the full list of options without scrolling. I thought the options were limited to the three visible ones.”
3. Proposed Solution/Change:	Suggest a functional change, not a visual one. Focus on clarity or flow.	“Suggestion: Increase the height of the return reason selector or use radio buttons instead of a drop-down to make the full list visible immediately.”
4. Severity:	Classify the importance of the fix. (Crucial, Major, Minor).	“Severity: Major. This roadblock could lead to unnecessary customer support calls or abandoned returns.”

By adopting the User Scenario Audit and focusing your comments on friction, clarity, and task completion (instead of style), you transform yourself from a subjective observer into a valuable UX tester. Your non-designer perspective is your greatest asset. Use it to validate that the app’s fundamental architecture is robust, intuitive, and ultimately, effective for the people who will use it every day.