> Some user(s) have some kind of task that they want to achieve. They could get together and communicate well with some kind of developer who can help them achi

> Some user(s) have some kind of task that they want to achieve. They could get together and communicate well with some kind of developer who can help them achieve or complete that task; all of which is likely doable without this middle layer of whatever this is. What you just described is the middle layer. You're describing a layer in the development of a product wherein the goals of the user and the business are translated into features that can be specified at a level of clarity which allows them to be implemented as part of a holistic, functional system. If a developer does this, he is doing design. If you agree that this is an important process, and is non-trivial to perform, you may find yourself saying "well, maybe some developers would be better at this than others," and now you've created a role called "Design Developer" or something like that. And then if you find that this Design Developer spends more of their time specifying features for other developers to implement, and less time coding, you can go ahead and optimize your hiring process for people who are good at talking to users and translating that understanding into specifications, rather than writing code. You've now recreated the role of designer. If instead, you say "well, this actually is a trivial process: any developer could do that work and still be a high-functioning programmer at the same time," then I would ask for some examples of this, and probably be able to give you ten or twenty times as many counterexamples.