"Designers" should never be put in a position of designing a UI. Claiming the mantle of "designer" usually seems to reveal a preference for static aesthetics over functional utility.
Nearly every time I see someone talking about "design" in the realm of user interfaces, or about making software "beautiful", they're invariably attempting to use concepts applicable to media intended for the presentation of information to a viewer in the context of an interface intended to facilitate dynamic interaction between a functional tool and the user, and it always seems to make the software more limited, less productive, and more frustrating to use.
A user interface is about exposing software functionality and enabling users to maximize their efficient use of their tools. Optimizing a UI to look good in a screenshot means not optimizing the UI to provide efficient access to the functionality of the application, and not optimizing the flexibility of the application for users to adapt it to their own priorities and work styles.
This trend of attempting to exercise top-down control over user experience needs to end, and software developers need to start paying attention to what users are actually trying to do with the products they build, instead of deferring to inappropriately-applied theoretical models offered by visual designers.
Design is how it works. Not how it looks. How it looks is properly called "style".
If you have found a "Designer" who is overly concerned with how it looks and not so much how it works, the conclusion to reach is that you have found a bad designer, not that all "designers" are concerned only with aesthetics.
If "design" is meant to refer to how things work rather than how they look, then it's clear that the majority of people talking about "design" with respect to software UIs are using the term incorrectly.
People who call themselves "designers" in this context, and at the present moment, generally are prioritizing screenshot aesthetics over functional utility, and we're getting worse software because of it.
Well you're not wrong about that. The word "design" and "designer" is vastly misunderstood by everyone, including many of the people who go around calling themselves "designers". It's like the problem the programming industry has with people applying to jobs, calling themselves "programmers", and who can't code the most basic things.
Except, that in the case of the designers, since the person giving the interview also does not know what design actually entails, they get hired.
The situation has led to actual designers inventing a new title to give themselves "UX", which I predict will also quickly get watered down to mean basically nothing.
It's kind of really sad. and frustrating.
Another problem is a real designer, calling themselves a designer, gets hired by an organisation that has the wrong idea about what a designer does, and so gets pigeonholed out of any important decision making processes, and only is allowed to be involved at the very end of the process.
A very good designer can get around this, but they often don't have much power in the organisation to do anything about this pigeonholing.
Nearly every time I see someone talking about "design" in the realm of user interfaces, or about making software "beautiful", they're invariably attempting to use concepts applicable to media intended for the presentation of information to a viewer in the context of an interface intended to facilitate dynamic interaction between a functional tool and the user, and it always seems to make the software more limited, less productive, and more frustrating to use.
A user interface is about exposing software functionality and enabling users to maximize their efficient use of their tools. Optimizing a UI to look good in a screenshot means not optimizing the UI to provide efficient access to the functionality of the application, and not optimizing the flexibility of the application for users to adapt it to their own priorities and work styles.
This trend of attempting to exercise top-down control over user experience needs to end, and software developers need to start paying attention to what users are actually trying to do with the products they build, instead of deferring to inappropriately-applied theoretical models offered by visual designers.