The mockup is no longer the deliverable

What the studio used to sell

For twenty years the interface design studio sold an identifiable object: a set of mockups, delivered, signed off, invoiced. That object served both as proof of work and as a basis for negotiation. It is starting to lose both functions.

We followed six studios between January 2025 and May 2026, observing their deliveries and reading through their contracts. In five cases out of six, the mockup still appears in the contract but is no longer what the client wants to talk about.

The file is no longer scarce

The value of a deliverable rests partly on its scarcity. When producing thirty variants of a screen takes a day, the variant no longer proves anything. The studios we observed responded by shifting what they promise: they no longer sell the production of screens, they sell the narrowing of the field of possibilities.

We are paid to say no to twenty-eight versions out of thirty. The client knows how to make all thirty. He does not know how to keep two.

Contracts that lag behind

Contractual documents remain behind this shift. They describe digital deliverables, approval cycles, a number of rounds. Once the value sits in the decision, those clauses become hard to rely on in a dispute.

Two studios rewrote their terms to include decision sessions billed separately. That is a local adjustment, and we do not yet know whether it will spread. It does show, though, that the question is now being put in the language of contract law and not only in that of work organisation.