The reason why I think they rejected you is because you are a single founder. That means if you get hit by a bus they're fucked. Whereas, if you had a team or a co-founder the company can still go on without you.
I agree that you shouldn't waste time, but I think wireframing is an important and necessary step that shouldn't be avoided or underestimated.
When you go right into high fidelity prototyping you are focusing on many elements of the design simultaneously. You are focusing on the coding (html prototypes), visual design, information architecture (layout, navigation, etc) and you are doing it all at once.
Because of this you end up giving each department bits and pieces of attention, but not enough to see all the details and insights had you focused entirely on each department one-by-one.
I've shot right to hi-fi mockups before and I ended up not seeing a crucial insight in the information architecture side of the project. For me, doing low-fi wireframes and then moving to hi-fi mockups works much better, so I don't overlook certain details and insights.
This isn't "armchair theory". Read the article again. The reasons are solid and the end result is what it says it is.
The article isn't saying if you do your search this way you will sell a billion products. Of course if that was the claim some statistical proof would be necessary. All the article is doing is offering a simpler and cleaner approach to search. That's all.
I appreciate your honesty and feedback. However, every article offers thorough and detailed reasoning of why something is suggested as a best practice. The reasoning is key.
It's also important to remember that just because it's a best practice does not mean it will apply for every design in every case, which is why testing should be done on your own with your own site if you feel the need.
We believe that picking ideas apart through and through with the use of experience, logic and intuition with brilliant design thinkers is the only way to arrive at something substantial and meaningful.
Simply accepting something because it has been tested or researched is not good enough, and does not engage the mind. Independently thinking about an idea with other independent thinkers is the only true way to arrive at something meaningful. While this is probably quite difficult, we are up to the challenge.
Comments that detract value or are off-topic are deleted. You can still disagree and add value, but unfortunately your motive so far has only been to detract value, which is professionally disappointing.
What you are asking for is for the research to tell you how to think and to validate the idea for you. That's somebody else's work, not yours. So you are wanting them to think for you, instead of thinking about the idea on your own. That's not critical thinking.
Critical thinking involves using your own mind to think about an idea without research. Not many people can do this.
Ideas are presented all the time. You either agree or disagree. If you are curious for evidence, then you do the research yourself. But don't agree or disagree on the basis that no research is presented, or on the basis that lots of research is presented. Either way is not critical thinking.
Dieterrams, thank you. What you said is exactly right. The reason the comment form is the way it is is because I could not find the right css code to change it, as the site is a WP theme buried in code.
However, this is completely irrelevant to the idea in the article and does not take any merit off of it whatsoever. If you cannot judge an idea for the idea itself, what chance do you have at learning anything from anything you read?