Well, usually “design” refers to how the thing looks and feels (and yes the Gateway one is hideous). As an engineer, I tend to use “design” and “engineering” interchangeably, but I’ve sort of got myself trained to use them the way other people do, and it seems to me, the features you’re talking about fall more under engineering, which may very well have been excellent. Look and feel, however, give me a break. You can’t say it was good for the time, because it made me gag when that was all there was.
They sold a lot of them, and at a very premium price, too - so, empirically, people believed at the time that it was a superior look and feel.