[SeoxyS]

The author of this post is so misguided it boggles the mind… I'm a developer, but I chose to study design in college rather than computer science, because in my opinion design is much harder to master than programming is, and can be a much greater catalyst to success than pure engineering alone can be.

I see design as an enabler. Engineering is where the heavy lifting is done, but design is what makes that possible. I hate to bring up Apple as an example, but when you look at, for example, Siri: voice recognition, understanding grammar and meaning within human sentences and the all technology behind it is fantastic engineering. But what differentiates Siri from anything else out there is the design. The fact that the AI has a personality, that it jokes around and does not feel like a machine, that's what makes it accessible to humans and what makes it so insanely great. And that's design.

I agree with the author to the extend that glossy buttons and a textured background does not a good product make. Indeed, there's a lot of good-looking crap out there—but that's not design, and the author's argument that that's what design is makes him look like an ignorant fool.

[tluyben2]

Not sure if you got his point. But design much harder than programming is; that's highly debatable. Sure, a lot of people can write code which kind of 'works', that's not really what I would call programming (and I don't think anyone here). As it takes about 10 years to really master writing great code and then get a lot of experience in the trenches, I believe this process is hard and takes a lot of time. Less than learning design. And you can do IA design even though you cannot make things pretty; a lot of people have a feeling for it.

If I (programmer, no design education or talent whatsoever) sit down with a pen and paper and draw a user interface (1 page) 100 times, the 100th time, it'll be quite optimal, consistent and nice. After that it goes through the pretty machine, an artist who cannot do IA, but can do pretty. It's a great combi. With programming, you cannot really do the same trick; you'll end up with crap.

I do agree that it an be a greater catalyst than pure engineering. I don't think it can be much of anything without engineering and value and that was the author his point. Of course when you made a product you want to make it look good and work well ergonomically, but you want the value and the engineering in place first. After reading the article I felt like his real beef is actually with nonsensical vaporware looking pretty to attract investors and morons signing up anyway.