I think most designers welcome negative feedback, we just insist on being treated with respect while being given said feedback. Calling something terrible, or your original comment which simply says you think it's bad without expanding, those are extremely negative ways of providing constructive criticism and I think you probably know that.

Maybe you're having a bad day, but that doesn't mean you can act like a dick and break this sites rules. Would you use those words or talk that way in a design review IRL? I highly doubt it.

Another great option to check out (free trial, priced well): https://www.keyshapeapp.com/

I've used it a few times now with great results.

I have this monitor at home and a 5k iMac at the office. It's pretty great for layout design, working through flows, and basically having a TON of stuff on the screen at once. That said I don't think I'd finalize anything on this monitor, I still do a good amount of work on my iMac or Macbook Pro. The color accuracy is obviously quite different than Apple products, so I wouldn't personally trust it as my only display.

As a companion to a retina Macbook Pro it can definitely get the job done and provide an absurd amount of real-estate.

I definitely agree it's great for fun!

The problem is many designers don't seem to realize what is meant for fun and what is realistic. It creates problems for everyone involved. Clients, teams, designers, bosses, etc. I can't count the number of times a client has started with us and all of their examples of what they love are crazy Dribbble designs with no basis in reality.

As I mentioned in my other reply, you really shouldn't be looking at Dribbble as anything but a playground where people with far too much free time show off. Real work isn't generally posted to Dribbble, at least not until after the fact, and it's certainly not as flashy once implemented.

As others have said, this is a problem with Dribbble in general. I'd say 90% of this flashy animated interaction work is simply to get up-votes/jobs on Dribble and nothing more (it's very hard to find anything that looks like what you posted and is actually live on an app store or the web). Most teams and especially clients are not actually implementing anything to that degree as that would be extremely difficult to do without having a super slow/clunky app, and forget mobile web.

It creates unrealistic expectations for anyone new to this kind of work. Motion certainly has a place in design but many of these Dribbble shots take it to an extreme for the sake of doing something pretty.

This has always been a problem with Dribbble and isn't unique to motion design.

I wouldn't bother with AE. Stick to tools like Flinto/Principle/Framer which are going to give you realistic results and don't have a massive learning curve. AE certainly has its place, but it's not for interaction design.

What is the purpose behind prototyping for you? Clients? Day job? Fun? Ultimately your job is to solve problems, not create flashy interactions because they look cool or it's trendy.

I think we can all agree the discipline and logic behind it is sound and extremely useful on large projects. I've used it across many.

The terminology was great for a blog post (essentially marketing), but not that useful in practice.

Mobile first is just another way of saying responsive web design. It may have actually meant mobile takes priority before app design took over, but responsive is the name of the game now in web. Clients may say one thing and mean another.

I specifically stated that I was not arguing for allowing the client to give feedback on every little detail. I am arguing for a balance between that and "designing in a black box" as the OP stated. Being iterative and keeping the lines of communication open is what I'm suggesting and is absolutely not designing in a black box.

Black box = getting requirements from client and delivering everything by the deadline, with little to no communication in between.

Yes, my process may be a bit more transparent than some, but it's certainly not as extreme as you're suggesting. Also... it works extremely well for our studio. We've been doing this for a while and have very happy clients, who pay us well. That doesn't mean your version doesn't work as well.

Designing in a black box however? Sorry, but I can't imagine that's working very well for anyone unless their clients are just really easily impressed and don't care about solving real problems.

I'm sorry, but this is a surefire way of building shitty products. While I agree allowing a client to micro-manage everything you do would not be productive, so is designing in a black box.

I don't think I'd ever say the words "design happens in a black box". That's just... wrong.

You seem to be arguing one extreme over another. There is a balance to this that results in good work and ultimately great products for your clients and their customers.

Literally every one of those hypothetical quotes you listed is something you can easily push-back on or give an answer that I think any reasonable person would understand.

"I thought you said this was a mobile-first design?"

"Well, we're starting with desktop and working our way down through the breakpoints. This is how we typically do things and it's worked well on our other engagements."

If they are still not convinced, show them a previous successful project where you did exactly this.

If they are still not convinced, you should fire the client and stop working with unreasonable people. Maybe I am extremely lucky and have only dealt with very few truly unreasonable people in my 13+ years doing this, but that doesn't seem to be the norm.

I'd argue further than you should educate your clients, especially if the project is substantial in scope. If I'm going to be working with someone for a month or more, I most definitely want them to understand and be fully bought into the design process. They hired me for this reason, not just because the pixels are pretty (usually). Even on small projects I talk about and go into the importance of various aspects of the design process and why we do certain things the way we do. We often use previous projects, which they have often hired us because they really liked, as examples of why sticking to this process (though exceptions can always be made for good reasons) is good.

The best clients feel like partners and this is often because they are bought into and appreciate your process, even if they don't fully understand it or have the experience to trust it.

It's your job as a designer to build this trust and understand that clients are paying you a lot of money to help them solve problems. This doesn't mean you have to do what they say, but it does mean you need to try and make them understand. It is client services after-all.

My last point, and I'm sorry this is a wall of text, is that design absolutely cannot happen in a black box. Sure, you might end up with something pretty and the client might think it's great. But does it actually solve the problems they need it to? How do you know? What assumptions did you base it on? Did you validate any of them? Did you dig into the problem? Did you iterate, get feedback, and iterate some more? Did you speak to any of their customers?

Often clients are building something that they actually do know a lot about. They can be their own customer in that regard and will be a great source of knowledge. Even if this isn't the case, they will usually have spoken to many of their customers, which you should do as well. Ignoring this and going off to do your thing with zero input is only going to create more work for you later and cost the client more money.

This isn't even addressing the fact that you might simply have designed the wrong thing, their expectations were for something totally different, and you just wasted weeks of work and now you have a frustrated client on your hands.

So yeah, no. I really dislike hearing this attitude, especially when younger designers might be reading it and thinking it's a normal way to approach design and client work. I can't count how many I've had to essentially un-brainwash to get out of this mindset.

Design can certainly happen in a black box, but it's not going to be good.