This duplicate-screens model helps us work visually, but it is also intensely time-consuming and limiting. So it’s no wonder we turn to code. Working directly in code may also be slow, but at least it’s not limiting.

To be clear we’re oversimplifying things a bit. Not every app is exactly a duplicate-screens app, however the over-simplification hits quite close to the mark even with those apps that let you dig a bit deeper.

Meanwhile roughly every ~1.5 years a new duplicate-screens prototyping tool surfaces. This pace has actually accelerated, with some companies moving this duplicate-screens model into a ‘tab’ of an editor.

Every iteration it’s the same duplicate-screens model over again, but somehow just a little bit better than the previously reigning tool.

Usually, the new product comes with a ~10% improvement on whatever came before. A little bit easier, or a little bit less frustrating…but mostly the same. The new tool takes the crown, until the cycle repeats itself.

It’s a broken cycle— today most designers just feel tired, and disillusioned. We’ve been going down the wrong road, and we’ve lost hope along the way.

Years of broken promises in modern design tools has decayed faith into a cocktail of skepticism, and fatigue.