Wireframe vs. mockup vs. prototype: How are they different?

Building digital products involves a substantial risk and resource investment, but utilizing tools like wireframes, mockups, and prototypes can mitigate these challenges by facilitating design iterations and feedback collection. Wireframes offer a preliminary sketch to visualize ideas, align teams, and structure discussions, serving as the foundational step in product development. Mockups, which evolve through low, medium, and high fidelity levels, allow teams to assess user flows, information architecture, look and feel, and detailed design elements, progressively refining the product's visual and functional characteristics. Prototypes add interactive elements to mockups, enabling users to experience and provide feedback on the product's usability and interactions, which is especially vital for innovative user flows. Each of these stages plays a distinct role in the design process, with their combined use helping to minimize costly errors and improve overall product quality, although practical constraints may necessitate skipping some steps based on confidence, resources, and risk tolerance.