In the artical of Style Tiles: An Alternative to Full Design Comp, it illustrate the reason of using style tiles is becaue that you can present clients with interface choices without making the investment in multiple photoshop mockups.
###Issues with Photoshop Mockups The issue with full-designed Photoshop Mockups is that they are not scable at all. It takes at least 2 months to fully impletment the site from the concensent of the mockups with stakeholders. And during that 2 months, a lot of things can hanppen.
I worked with a web agency to resigned our company website before. And during the design phrase, they presented us with some really beautiful Photoshop Mockups. They were really great, very pretty. And we were so happy about those.
But the issue came after the whole website was implemented. We wanted more features. We wanted more robust features because of business growth. And the Photoshop Mockups were not scalable at all. There is no way that we can add more features into the site without breaking the aesthetic.
###Style Tiles within a Startup Everything moves fast inside a startup company. As a front-end guy, you need to add/remove some features as the product evolve. And Style Tiles are your guide.
I use this method for the company that I work with now. Unless they need a redesign of the whole site, asking a new set of color theme, style, typography, etc, I would go back to the current design pattern and abstract that to implement it to the site. It is fast. And it stays consistent with the current site design.
###Style Tiles is Good for Editors For me, style tiles is not only good for designer and developer, or just to stay current within the company business need, it is also very easy for eaditors, marketers and writes to main the site content.
When I was working in a Chinese portal site, my job is to edit and update contents and designs for the movie department, which has 2 small tile areas on the front page of the website. Aside from interviewing and compiling articles of latest news of the industry, I was also responsible for updating the content, image and color scheme of those two area. And the whole point is to get as much traffic as possible.
The cool thing here is that you don't have to worry about breaking anything. And as a web editor in one department, I didn't need to care about the whole aethetics of the site.
###In Conclusion It was first time for me to hear of this concept. And it makes sense right away from my previous experience with internet. I have always doubted the traditional web design methodology with design comps and didn't see the way out. But I would incorporate style tiles to my next design project.