If it's not better by any metric, then why is it a nice touch?

Yeah some of the guides are pretty ridiculous, this one in particular got me: http://cloud.ubbedall.com/01bfd683f2c8

Oh wow the composition of the full-bleed image is derived from the U, so cohesive...

I don't get it? It just looks like mobile.twitter.com?

Am I the only one who dislikes it? Structure seems all over the place, just comes off a bit chaotic to me.

It bugs me an extraordinary amount that the directional lighting on the buttons isn't matched in the shading of the illustrations - it ruins the illusion of tactility.

I mean regardless of whether or not people are over "the pretentious designer notebook trend", this doesn't really qualify as designer news which is what I think people are salty about.

Most of these aren't even interactions..

My university professor always hated the structure of "building up to the big reveal", and perhaps that's left me biased, but I think I agree.

Instead of putting the viewer/client in a position where they're slowly building expectations as to what they think the solution should be, which you'll inevitably never align with 100%, I find it better to be upfront about the proposed solution.

Obviously first define the problem you're trying to solve, but why not go right to the solution after that. You can explain how your particular design solves that problem, and then go on to address what other options you explored that didn't work for particular reasons, or what shortcomings the particular design might have in order to focus the feedback a bit more, rather than asking for open questions before people have a concrete design to help ground some of the more abstract thinking.