[emgreen]

I find it slightly odd when developers resist caring about UX stuff, because in lots of ways we're already doing it whenever we code. When coding we worry about how to communicate the code's behaviour well, and whether it will work intuitive for other devs. In UX's and in code we strive to build a shared, useful and elegant mental model of the world. An API is just a UX for devs.

Apart from that, the ultimate purpose of our code is to serve the people in the world. Well, kind of, often it's just for fun. But generally the aim is to have a user using something; to exist as an entity in their lives and minds. Surely this means studying the user doing their using is just inherently fascinating? (If a dev codes in a forest, and no-one is around to use it ...)

I'm all for specialist UX folk, if resources can accommodate, they've put the time into their discipline, and will obviously do a better job than those who haven't. But when resources don't stretch, developers' brains won't explode if they start thinking about UIs and UXs. There's enough transferable skills there (methodical approach based on evidence, iterations, model building, communication), that I think it's something a lot of devs could get passably good at and enjoy without diverting too much energy away from their principle specialisation. In fact I've found that my experiences with UX stuff has improved my dev work.