When Wireframes Are Still the Right Tool (and When They Aren’t)

A pragmatic take on Axure, Figma, and code-first prototyping.

In the design industry, the "Death of the Wireframe" has been predicted every year since 2015. First, Sketch and Figma made high-fidelity design so fast that gray boxes felt obsolete. Now, AI tools like Lovable and V0 allow us to generate working code faster than we can draw rectangles.

If we can skip straight to the final product, why do we still talk about wireframes?

As a UX Designer with a background in Human Factors, I argue that the artifact (the gray box) is dead, but the activity (Logic Modeling) is more critical than ever. The danger lies in confusing Visual Fidelity with Logical Fidelity.

Here is the 2026 rubric for choosing the right tool for the risk profile of your product.

The Trap of "Fidelity Theater"

The most dangerous deliverable in modern product design is the "Clickable Figma Prototype."

It looks like a finished app. It has beautiful shadows, perfect typography, and smooth transitions. But functionally, it is a slide deck. It has no brain. It cannot remember that you checked a box on Screen 1 when you arrive at Screen 3.

This is Fidelity Theater. It gives stakeholders a false sense of confidence that the product "works," when in reality, the complex edge cases and error states have been glossed over by a happy path.

This is where the choice of tool becomes a business decision, not a creative one.

1. When to Use Axure (The "Logic Simulator")

We still deploy Axure RP (or advanced logic tools) when the primary risk is Complexity, not desirability.

If we are building a complex FinTech underwriting workflow, a logistics dispatch system, or a medical dashboard, the difficulty isn't "Does the button look good?" The difficulty is: "If the user selects 'International Shipping' but the weight is over 50kg, what happens to the Tax ID field?"

Use deep wireframing when:

• •Data Dependencies exist: The state of Screen C depends on inputs from Screen A.
• •Mathematical Logic is required: The interface needs to calculate totals, filter dynamic lists, or handle conditional variables.
• •The Cost of Error is High: If the logic fails, the business loses money or users face safety risks.

In these cases, a "gray box" prototype that actually functions (uses variables and logic) is infinitely more valuable than a beautiful Figma prototype that is effectively a movie prop.

2. When to Use Code-First (The "Velocity" Build)

For 80% of modern SaaS products, traditional wireframing is a waste of budget.

If we are building a standard CRUD application (Create, Read, Update, Delete)—like a settings page, a user profile, or a standard dashboard—the patterns are solved problems. We don't need to reinvent the wheel in gray boxes.

Skip wireframes and go straight to Code (Next.js/AI) when:

• •You have a Design System: If we have a tokens.json file and a component library, "designing" in code is faster than drawing in Figma.
• •The patterns are standard: Users know how a login flow works. Don't overthink it.
• •The goal is "Vibe" Validation: If you need to test how the product feels (animation, latency, responsiveness), you can only do that in the browser.

In this mode, we use AI Agents to scaffold the UI instantly. We treat the code as the sketchpad.

3. When to Use Figma (The "Visual Architect")

Figma remains the source of truth for Visual Semantics and Stakeholder Alignment, but not for logic.

We use Figma to define the System:

• •The Token Schema (Colors, Spacing, Typography).
• •The Component Architecture (Variants, Props).
• •The High-Fidelity "North Star" vision.

But we strictly avoid using Figma to validate complex workflows. It creates "Spaghetti Prototypes"—thousands of blue noodles connecting screens—that are impossible to maintain and impossible for developers to decipher.

The Verdict: Match the Tool to the Risk

At Proto UX, we don't dogmatically stick to one tool. We diagnose the project risks during the Cognitive Audit phase and select the protocol.

• •Is it a Logic Problem? We use Logic Maps and Axure. We architect the decision tree before we paint it.
• •Is it a Speed Problem? We use Lovable and Next.js. We build the V1 to get real data fast.
• •Is it a System Problem? We use Figma and JSON Tokens. We build the governance structure.

The goal isn't to produce a wireframe. The goal is to produce Certainty. Sometimes certainty looks like a gray box with variables; sometimes it looks like a deployed React app.

The best designers know the difference.

Written by Young Ryu, Ph.D.
Principal at Proto UX