[seanmcdirmid]

Visual design is concerned about aesthetics, or at least how visual characteristics influence usability. Interaction design is more concerned about the overall story and workflow of the artifact. These are quite different jobs.

[Sevores]

Yes, but I think he's saying that they shouldn't be separate. At least not in the sense that someone wires it up and _then_ makes it pretty. "…prior to Jobs’s return to Apple, design was what happened at the end of the engineering process. Post-Jobs, engineering became a component of the design process. This shift made all the difference in the world." — http://daringfireball.net/2012/02/walter_isaacson_steve_jobs

[seanmcdirmid]

The daringfireball post is messed up on so many levels. There are actually designers (IxDs) who are solely concerned with artifact function and not aesthetics. Such designers are often former developers (but they could just as well be trained as graphic designers or even architects), and in the worst case design-light organizations, they might just be product managers. Design is something that happens up front and then during the engineering process as new trade offs or realizations arise. Sometimes things get messed up and the dev team is forced to start before the design team (due to resource constraints), and the project just turns out to be very messy then.

When I was working in a big corp design studio, my boss was a former pre-Jobs Apple guy and it didn't sound like things were very different back then either.

Let's root our conversation in reality and not in some hypothetical black and white world.