Wireframes are for evolution not revolution?

I’ve been a part of some very interested conversations recently about a user experience we’ve been developing and whether they making evolutionary improvements to a website or revolutionary change.  In the course of these discussions we’ve developed some concept sketches of revolutionary user experiences that we are contemplating.  The interesting thing about the concept sketch is that it is a hybrid between a boxes-and-arrows wireframe and a visual sketch.  

I’ve written before about the fallacy of wireframes being independent of design, however I’m very interested in the thought that wireframes are not a one-size-fits-all approach, but in fact come in different flavours with different levels of specificity.  Wireframes typically exist at a level of detail where content and functionality is already defined and their task is to optimise which elements are on which page and when.  The inherent assumptions of this type of wireframe regarding the interface layout make it extremely unlikely to revolutionise the user experience.  However, the artefact that you need to create when starting on a revolutionary concept is decidedly not a piece of graphic design, it’s a content/functionality sketch… which to my mind is a form of wireframe.  

Filed under: creative delivery, folly, information architecture, method, style, user interface , design, evolution, IA, revolution, user experience, UX, wireframes