An interesting take on which part of the dog wags.
In your model, developers seem positioned to serve designers.
Having written a book on design, and practised it, I have to say that web is very unusual in allowing designers such rein. In other disciplines, like sound design or product design, the constraints and requirements of the project come first, and designers need to fit their work to that.
A very great many web projects I have seen fail went south the moment "designers" got involved. Designers seems to wield an inappropriate level of power and influence, and operate without proper technical supervision, often breaking things or creating unreasonable demands.
I think this misalignment comes from the early days of the web, when anyone who could write HTML called themself a web designer and took on an entire site development. Even though post-CGI/database the server-side roles were better differentiated, the legacy of "aesthetic driven design" lingers.
I do not want to denigrate web designers, but times have changed and in my opinion, having a website that "looks great" just isn't that important these days. I'd much rather use simpler, accessible, secure, private, content-centred sites.
Why exclude aesthetics? There is no need for it. It positively affects usability, just like the other qualities you described.
It does indeed. "Aesthetics" in the most accurate sense of the word, as opposed to orderliness or just "looking right", is about how it makes us feel. Some people seem particularly sensitive to it and say they can't use a site or application that feels wrong. I respect that nuanced choosyness. Indeed I'm sure there's a biological thing going on, as in the way we select berries to eat or choose partners to mate with. Hard to introspect parts of our brain say "that's okay" or "that's off, don't touch". Aesthetics is very real.
But (there's always a but :) ... it should never be put ahead of functionality. As I see it that's what makes "Design" design, and not Art. It's blending aesthetics and elegance within a practical value set. And very often that "requirements set" is given to us designers by another... a film director, a product manager, an information architect etc. They say - "Here's what it has to do, (functional requirement) now go design it (non-functional)".
And what I am saying is that, in Web Design at least, the designers have gotten the upper hand, and that's partly the fault of developers, system architects, or project managers for letting themselves get pushed around like that.
That would be the role of a designer who is doing their job properly and paying attention to the specification for a simple, accessible, secure, private, and content-centred site.
- If the font has associations with a particular place or time that you want to imbue your system with.
- If you give the user themselves the ability to select a font that works best for them (for example a font focused on the dyslexia reading experience in an ereader).
Such as?