I also disagree with his “inherent ability” argument. I think that interface design is a learnable skill and can be improved through practice. Which of us is ri

I also disagree with his “inherent ability” argument. I think that interface design is a learnable skill and can be improved through practice. Which of us is right? We’ll never know, as it’s not really a testable assertion. In my opinion, that makes it a pretty weak argument that detracts from the rest of his article. Besides that, it could have the effect of discouraging people from trying, as they’ll just think “Oh well I can never do that because I don’t have the genes, or whatever.” My opinion is that programmers in particular have a hard time with design because they’re not presented with a systematic way of thinking about it. That’s what I’ve started to try to do with my site http://www.visualmess.com http://www.visualmess.com . It tries to instill the “user-centric” mentality and provide a framework for thinking about design based on the brain’s visual information processing capabilities.