Whole point of design is not to be bundled together with art.

Good design strives towards a more engineering/problem solving approach - finding solutions to identified problems.

This is why the article is kinda whatever - design with ornamentation or doodads is not design.

I grew up in a city full of “unnecessary” ornament and spent a while in a city where everything was turning into absolutely brutalist 5-over-1 apartment blocks. That ornament does a lot to make the place feel welcoming and human.

Mood is a thing that design and ornamentation effects. It is a thing neglected by engineers and capitalists on the whole but it is important.

It all depends on the quality of the design and engineering. If you feel alienated and shitty in a place, then it probably wasn’t designed very well.

I don’t know where all the “capitalists” come in to the picture as that is a whole other matter.

One issue I see is that all the new cloud-friendly UI design apps seem to be very oriented towards flat design, so doing anything else may be an uphill battle.