Spot on, thanks for the great write-up. In my experience, by the way, this phenomenon did not only start with showcasing lipstick-on-a-pig work on dribbble and consorts but way earlier, with a constant flow of glossy product renderings filling all the space in design mags and a surge of coffeetable books replacing the critical review (if there ever was one) and presentation of actually _prototyped_ – that is built and reality-proven – artefacts with a visible context that also helps to clarify the rationale behind a solution. Fortunately, there is also a rising wave of criticism towards stylistic superficiality within the professional discourse, and there appear to be more and more designers out there, who get it and are willing to move the goal-posts accordingly. Some optimism seems reasonable. :-)

P. S.: The presented layer model of design might be worth discussing (to me, it seems a little bit too analytical, top-down, pyramid-like to capture and satisfy the strong interdependency and feedback loops between all the layers from the abstract to the concrete – see also https://medium.com/@brsma/while-i-fully-agree-on-the-need-for-conceptual-clarity-i-think-you-are-putting-the-cart-before-the-d8f141f29790#.u64gib2xz), but this is only a minor point for now.