I would argue that iOS users also don't know that they can double tap the iphone home button twice to pull up the ability to kill an app without someone telling them that functionality exist or they accidentally find out. This widget concept would be no different.
This is exactly how i feel right now. I am, by unfortunate circumstances, the only designer in one of the offices of an enterprise company being ran by dev-minded people. I know my weaknesses and strengths, but I need a design-influenced team and company for me to better than what I'm outputting right now.
If I were to look for a job now with a portfolio of the products I've worked on at the company over the last year, it would definitely be an uphill battle.
You're not the only one. I wouldn't categorize my current place of employment as "enterprise", but it sucks not being able to design to your full potential. It's an agency, so you can't give the client the best you can do unless they're willing & able to pay for that (and many aren't).
I'd recommend doing as many side projects as you can. I know it can be hard to find the time (I have a one year old son so I'm familiar with the struggle) but if you can put something together over a few nights/weekends, and really design the hell out of it, it'll make stomaching your day-job constraints much easier. Just remember the Sex and Cash theory: http://gapingvoid.com/?s=sex+and+cash+theory What you do at work is strictly to pay the bills. If you happen to enjoy it sometimes, great; but remember that what really matters is what happens outside of that.
Another example: I used to flip burgers, but I enjoy cooking at home. I wasn't ashamed of the nasty food I pumped out of that fast-food kitchen, because I knew it wasn't a representation of my cooking abilities, it was just what I did to pay the bills. Apply the same thinking to your situation.
"clean design" has been around since the 20th century. It just went away, but came back, and it will go away again and will most likely come back again. So yes, design is in trends, just like any other field has trends, but "clean design" has pretty good odds to come back again. 90s grunge design.....not so likely.
We might have different concepts of what "90s grunge design" is, but I'd place it squarely in the bucolic/naturalistic/romantic/bohemian tradition, something harking back to a time when geometry (Mother of clean design) hadn't been discovered yet. So I'd say the odds of an eventual comeback are quite high.
The article writer contradicts him/herself when they emphasis "simplifying" infographics (with the animated gif example), but their favorite infographic at the moment is the Microsoft/Nokia example they showed. That infographic contains a pie chart.
Pie charts are hard to read and to compare size. As you can see in that example, for you (the user) to gather the information, you need to see the percentile, then also look at the legend outside the pie chart. A bar graph would've conveyed the information more efficiently.
I agree with this article, but who is to say the goal of Dribbble isn't to just showcase visual design? To join Dribbble, you must get an invite from a Dribbble user. Dribbble users invite people who have similar taste and design state-of-mind as they do. So in the end you get a gated community of designers who think and work alike.
The problem with this I see is that non-design people who wants to hire designers think that Dribbble is the "go to" standard of design, without thinking of usability problems their product[s] have that needs solving.
You nailed it. Dribbble excels at featuring and sharing solutions to visual design challenges. Icons. Logos. UI components that show effective affordance (as best you can tell from a small screenshot).
I think Dribbble is somewhat a victim of success; everyone wants in and uses it as they see fit.
