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From my perspective as a dev, this is what happened: UI designers who had been trained on usability, who had a good grip on what was/wasn’t feasible technically

From my perspective as a dev, this is what happened: UI designers who had been trained on usability, who had a good grip on what was/wasn’t feasible technically, and knew to take content variability into account were almost wholesale replaced with more generalist print/graphic designers who were great at pumping out pretty branded PSDs, but not so great at producing usable UIs. My guess is that this happened because real UI designers are harder to come by and cost more, while generalists are more common and cost less. I’ve not hired for these positions though so I don’t know for sure.

api 3y ago
It can also just be a result of oversupply of certain college degrees. Back in the late 90s to early 2000s there was a big trend of graphic design degrees at universities probably far in excess of available jobs for that specialty. I knew a bunch of these and many went into web design, and now I’m sure are doing UI design now that the web engine is the de facto standard UI engine everywhere but mobile. (Even on mobile it has an increasing presence.)