> I've seen many redesigns and that tends not to be something people do—there's usually a good bump in visual quality in the process. So really, the important

> I've seen many redesigns and that tends not to be something people do—there's usually a good bump in visual quality in the process. So really, the important point is that you can gain affordances for usability sins if you have a design that is appealing to people as modern or otherwise trendy. By the same process: if you have a design that was 100% usable, then redesign and end up making usability mistakes, there's a good chance you'll see net-zero or negative from the prettier UI in your testing. For the majority of companies that do not have focus groups, usability labs, and a design staff that can spend cycles on R&D, it seems you may be better off doing little more than reskinning existing UI controls to maintain trendiness than full-scale re-wires of your existing product at any time to maximize the aesthetic-usability effect for minimal design work. Examples you cite in a sibling comment have cash to burn on exactly this, however I think that is the exception rather than the norm for businesses at large. Visual (aesthetic) design change buys goodwill, reinforces and differentiates brand image, but IMO is mostly a marketing tool at the end of the day. I see product design and visual design as sister disciplines that must communicate, similar to two people running a three-legged race, but it is easy to improve one or the other separately from the other in most iterative scenarios. Large-scale redesigns are usually risky, and Snapchat's a great high-profile example of a company that was able to hire talent and let that process go off the rails.