[Silhouette]

UI: User Interface - the layout & visual look & feel of the page/components. UX: User Experience - the interactions of these pages/components by the user (incl. expected behaviour etc.)

But UI has always been about more than mere aesthetics. A UI is literally how the user interacts with the system, the interface between them. That subject has always encompassed usability and accessibility issues, information architecture, planning sequences of interactions, and so on. What you've described is exactly the illusory distinction I was talking about.

I'm not sure there's much to be gained from pursuing this line of discussion any further. Obviously you can redefine terms to suit your argument and thus make your argument true in that context, but then it doesn't really address the original point of debate, which was whether developers should be overriding designers and domain experts in matters of design. If you relegate your designers and domain experts to the equivalents of those code monkeys you mentioned while elevating your developers to developers who are also designers and domain experts, obviously the latter are going to make better calls on most UI issues as well, but then you have to ask why you had separate designers and domain experts involved at all. I don't think that's a normal distribution of skills and responsibilities within a product team, though.

[sloxy]

> which was whether developers should be overriding designers and domain experts in matters of design

in matters of UX...