[notduncansmith]

Style and metaphor are integral parts of interaction design. When a user clicks a button to dismiss a dialog, what should happen?

If the experience you're trying to create (in line with the brand) is more playful, then maybe the modal should bounce out of view. If it's a very serious corporate app that people are just using because they have to, then the modal should either quickly fade, or just immediately disappear. One would be inclined to call this "style".

What about when a user is asked to input a date and time? There are two visual metaphors that come to mind: a calendar and a clock. The interaction designer has a few choices here. Date + number picker, date + clock (cool metaphor for selecting a time, but a non-standard UI pattern that could confuse people). This is an interaction design problem, not a visual design problem.

Perhaps you're referring to style and metaphor as the color of buttons and the background texture of panels. That I would say generally falls more into the realm of visual design; however, colors of buttons convey different semantic information, which affects how people interact with your app.

[judk]

> the experience you're trying to create (in line with the brand)

Everything wrong with design, in one line."Function follows form" at ts worst.