Visual Basic 1.0 was definitely a product that "thrilled users and grew the bottom line", as Alan Cooper puts it.
Projects using Visual Basic fared a lot better.
Once could argue that the best UI/UX is UI and UX that gets out of your way, that is UI that is none at all. If we could interface with our machines without UI/UX and through some other means like thoughts or electrical impulses that would be the best UI/UX there is.
And anyway, I'm not arguing against research or against UX, I am arguing against the fact that the article is alluding something not true, that design is the gauge of a high tech companies health. The idea that those researchers are finding out anything that a few engineers can't find and iterate over is nonsense.
Please read up on this for a more productive discussion as I'm genuinely not trying to argue with you: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_experience_design
You should spend some time reading Emotional Design [1].
Only amateurs to design think it is all about usability and minimizing complexity.
The real ROI from a talented designer is a product that creates an emotional connection with the user. Just look at Apple products: people attach their identity to the products - that's how powerful the design of the product can be.
The design (which includes the technical capabilities) can extend beyond just a simple tool providing utility to something which is a memorable pleasant experience - which you want to keep using.
Companies you can achieve the above are the ones who are incredibly successful i n the tech industry. Design is not always obvious - so people easily miss the cause/effect. And achieving it is not all about a flashy gradient or trendy flat design. It's a complex extremely well thought-out user experience. Take a phone's UX for example, from opening the package, to how it's used daily, to the times you need to plug it in while half-asleep next to your bed.
None of that can be summarized as just "getting out of your way", it's about providing the best experience as a result of optimizing the hundreds of small interactions involved in using the product.
[1] http://www.amazon.com/Emotional-Design-Love-Everyday-Things/...
Graphic designers mocking up PSDs are useless. A UX team with designers and researchers are worth their weight in gold and bring immense value to the SDLC by helping the dev teams validate their designs against user mental models early on in the product development life cycle.
And if you think I'm talking out of my ass, here is a voice of authority: Alan Cooper, “Father of Visual Basic," with his book 'The Inmates Are Running the Asylum'
http://www.amazon.com/The-Inmates-Are-Running-Asylum/dp/0672...
"The Inmates are Running the Asylum argues that, despite appearances, business executives are simply not the ones in control of the high-tech industry. They have inadvertently put programmers and engineers in charge, leading to products and processes that waste huge amounts of money, squander customer loyalty, and erode competitive advantage. They have let the inmates run the asylum. Alan Cooper offers a provocative, insightful and entertaining explanation of how talented people continuously design bad software-based products. More importantly, he uses his own work with companies big and small to show how to harness those talents to create products that will both thrill their users and grow the bottom line."
I highly suggest you step off your pedestal and read this book. If not, enjoy creating your architecturally efficient, crappy software that is a pain for actual humans to use.