[chefandy]

And this is one of the big problems... not what you're talking about, but your understanding of what we do.

'Art' and UI/UX design are as different as fiction writers and technical writing. Someone might be good at both, but they're definitely not the same thing. Interfaces are a communication medium, and reasoning about the best way to communicate something is a process that often doesn't even touch aesthetics. These types of designers working for larger companies probably don't even get invited to the meetings where aesthetic decisions get made, and they definitely don't work for the art director who'd be involved in that.

The first step is figuring out what problems your users are trying to solve, and the next step is working with them to figure out the most effective way to do that. It's pretty pointless when the users are insanely defensive about the status quo, as is the case in most FOSS projects.