at my company, www.northeastanalysis.com It’s my job to design the app.
Without me, the programmers would communicate directly with people who have no clue what they want - They just want something and they have nothing to pay for it with.
So I have to spend a full-time effort to make up for it. Without a designer, you’re in a world of hurt. My clients aren’t allowed to talk to my programmers at all - ever. God that would be disastrous. It’s happened before and it cost tens of thousands of dollars.
I’ve stopped programming, a few years ago because I couldn’t handle the heartbreak of my ideas being rejected. Now I run a team who does it.
We actually had an artist design the interface. That was WONDERFUL. It looked good and all the HTML was created by the software. All we had to do was insert the functional code and convert to a GSP(Groovy Server Page). Programmers should never design or do analysis. My only feedback is “I don’t think they want that” but it is never my call.
However, we don’t have a choice. We have to talk to the users. We have been here longer than them and we know their jobs better than all the new people. I wish I had a dime for every time I heard “Teach me how to do this thing that you have never done”.