This is the reason design isn’t a simple concept. The non-aesthetic portions of the effort (contextual and ethnographic research, information architecture, gene

This is the reason design isn’t a simple concept. The non-aesthetic portions of the effort (contextual and ethnographic research, information architecture, general usability, workflows, requirement generation, etc.) need to be done just so those warts can be exposed. After the fundamentals are solid it’s then important to apply appropriate aesthetic and interactive elements to polish the experience. Simply jumping to visual design after skipping the fundamentals is nearly assuring a failure. It would be akin to worrying about performance and scaling of product’s database and API without first considering if the data schemas and underlying technology stack even meet the operational needs. Addendum: “Evolutionary design” instead of “revolutionary design” is typically preferred if one would like to keep a connection between how something was done before and the (hopefully) improved version.