From the moment that you acknowledge that red text on a blue background is hard to read and makes a product genuinely worse, you must acknowledge that the design of a product is a legitimate part of a product.
Design and usability go hand in hand, and _of course_ a product's usability is a genuine part of the feature matrix of products. Sure, some design differentiation is "marketing" , but you also have designs that genuinely make a product better/worse.
Comments
woah woah woah, let's step back a second.
From the moment that you acknowledge that red text on a blue background is hard to read and makes a product genuinely worse, you must acknowledge that the design of a product is a legitimate part of a product.
Design and usability go hand in hand, and _of course_ a product's usability is a genuine part of the feature matrix of products. Sure, some design differentiation is "marketing" , but you also have designs that genuinely make a product better/worse.