I've worked with many, and none have ever had a bona fide engineering or comp. sci. background, except for a few who didn't cut it in the ranks of developers, a

I've worked with many, and none have ever had a bona fide engineering or comp. sci. background, except for a few who didn't cut it in the ranks of developers, and so redirected themselves or were shunted off to UI (now "UX" to make it sound cool) -- they've all been visual artist types. I find it best to get high-level (graphics, the css, color schemes) design ideas from them, and then leave it to the engineers for implementation, who might tweak/adjust/remove some items in order to balance with performance, usability, and sanity. If, instead, UX is given "authori-tie" then it becomes ridiculous, fast.