[kqr]

Your conclusion is hard to argue against, but I'd like to pitch in that some customers explicitly want something that's not well designed.

In particular, those customers that think adopting an early-stage prototype will give them a competitive advantage, they expect something that's not well designed. If they get something shiny when they've asked for a prototype, they'll be worried you're trying to hide a turd behind the polish, whereas if you give them something that doesn't look great, they'll know you're serious about giving them the latest, rawest, earliest experience of whatever it is you're innovating on.

(Of course, "early adopters" is a rather small market niche, so you might not grow very far doing just this.)

[glutamate]

Super interesting, I think this level of 3D client interaction is above my pay grade

[sosull]

It pulls at a compelling thread about the differential possibilities of design and the identities it's coded against. Anti-design is an inherently valuable approach to work. It can let us think about how to achieve the right client fit, the right product motivations, and the right overall system incentives. This isn't to agree (per se) that only bad clients want glossy design in prototypes, but rather to suggest that we as people self-segregate into particular visual cultures that may seem inherently bad to outsiders. Design, or the perceived lack of it, can be a form of (highly valued) in-group signalling that allows us to sieve out the wrong kinds of interactions.

And then sometimes bad design is just great on its own merits. By way of example: https://x.com/NCTreasurer/status/1577673238536245248?s=20