[H1Supreme]

I worked in graphic design before I made my way into programming full time. My first job was building desktop apps with a team of programmers with very little design sensibilities. As such, there was lots of plain grey, haphazard interfaces. While they functioned fine, they left nearly everything to be desired aesthetically.

I received immediate, positive feedback on my initial contributions. Applying basic design to otherwise "undesigned" interfaces, made a big difference to our users.

While that may be an extreme example, it does highlight the need for design. Whether or not someone can "respect" it, as the OP suggests, is debatable. But, the effectiveness of something designed well, isn't.

[Consultant32452]

When I think of design I think of two very different definitions. The first is as you describe, putting some basic aesthetics and usability on an otherwise "undesigned" page/app/etc. The other definition is how I worked on a team that spent over a week rebuilding buttons because the designer didn't like the way native buttons worked in browsers.

When someone complains about how superfluous "design" is, I always assume they mean the latter definition. But I could be wrong.

[walljm]

agreed. the opportunity for huge gains are only available when the starting point is really bad, so then the change is huge and thus obviously recognizable. when you're already operating at near the top of the game, differences are very small. but those small differences are what make the difference between really good and insanely great. and its worth striving for that.

[lobotryas]

The biggest problem is that after this initial, high value work is done the designers are still on the payroll and they still need to demonstrate their value/be doing something. That’s how you get un-necessary UI redesigns and, arguably, custom typefaces.

IMHO, designers just don’t know when to stop.

[dceddia]

I think the same could be said of developers. Or, maybe in both cases, it's the companies that don't know when to stop.

As a developer, and maybe more relevant here, a user of software, it's kind of surprising how development efforts often continue well past the point of shipping something useful. Now, I'm not arguing that this applies to every software product, or that people should stop at the bare minimum like "welp, we shipped v1, let's pack it up everyone."

But this underlying belief that things must be continually improved is very pervasive in software and even moreso in open source. ("Last commit was 6 months ago? This project is obviously dead!")

I don't know that anything can or should be done to "fix" this, but it's an interesting observation. Think about it next time there's an "upgrade" that breaks something or changes a workflow you liked. Why did that happen?

[lobotryas]

The difference is that developers can go on to build new features or even new products for the same company. Can they end up making things worse? Yes, but in such case I personally would blame short-sighted Product Managers chasing the new shiny.

Conversely, designers can not in isolation build a new product and thus are stuck (again, in my opinion) reinventing the wheel for what exists.

And yes, I agree with you that there is a lot of change for its own sake and I wish it would stop regardless of the source. See the recent UI overhaul of gmail. It was enough to force me to use their basic HTML UI and now I’m looking for an alternative all together.