Erika Hall of Mule Design on the value of design:

You are making UX design decisions as soon as you specify anything you expect another human to interact with, as soon as you specify anything that has implications for how a human might interact with it. Of course, you are are also making system design decisions, but we assume you are comfortable with that sort of thing.

So don’t pretend like you aren’t making design decisions already. And don’t make them by omission. You cannot NOT design something. The floor of Silicon Valley is littered with the crumbling husks of great ideas—useful products and services that died in the shell before they hatched out of their impenetrable engineering-specified interfaces. (It’s why Sunnyvale roads have the same consistency as the floor of a Western bar.)