UI - or any other design is not primarily about aesthetics. Where the author says, "You don't use Google maps because it looks nice, you use it because it tells

UI - or any other design is not primarily about aesthetics. Where the author says, "You don't use Google maps because it looks nice, you use it because it tells you where to go", he's right, but it took good design to make you be able to use maps and to get value from the increasing amount and level of complexity of info therein. That all said, I agree with him that many UI redesigns are pointless and expensive. Those tend to be the ones that don't bring new value to the user - just try to do the same old thing in a "modern" or (yikes - I hate this word) "fresh" way. Good design of anything is hard, UI's are no exception. When you go beyond UI to uX, you enter the world of motivation, intent, expectations, and other emotional fuzziness. The design job gets harder by 10 or 100x. But it's there that you find the good reasons to consider a UI redesign.