[NoCulturalFit]

Good UX comes from good performance. Everything else is subjective.

If it's sluggish, buggy and anything else that the Engineers usually deal with, it doesn't matter how Material their design is.

The design can be iterated on and experimented with as long as you can ship. A psd isn't shipping.

[vacri]

You can have the quickest, cleanest backend in the world, but if it's laid out badly at the frontend, it doesn't matter.

I remember having to use a SAP-like bit of software called MFG/Pro years ago. It was reasonably quick to perform any action, but the workflow was baroque. In order to consume a part from stores, no matter how trivial (a washer? a nylon screw?), in addition to actual data entry, I had to click 'next' 27 times and 'back' about 6 times, and at the right points in the workflow or it would have to start over. Literally 27 times, working through various inventory wizard screens. It was the poster child for bad UX.

The same company's paid support patch process went like this: we give you credentials to the FTP site, and it's up to you to check it for updates. No, we won't send you an email when this happens.

Similarly, good design can make up for mediocre engineering. It's really not as black-and-white as you're painting.

[aggie]

> The design can be iterated on and experimented with...

All you're arguing here is that engineers should do design. Do you think it's likely that an engineer (at an equivalent salary no less) would be better than a designer at design? Outside of small start-ups, your argument holds no water unless you want to say division of labor should be avoided.

> ...as long as you can ship.

You don't need a shippable product to learn and develop. Iteration and experimentation can be done more efficiently with design methods such as prototyping. Why should an engineer build something before gathering evidence that it will work?