>Another example of playful design is the “Kudos” button on Svbtle, which lights up and pops out.

until seeing all the states of that button laid out here, i had no idea what that thing at the bottom of all the svbtle blogs was. It might be playful, but it's certainly not intuitive. Mystery Meat at it's finest.

This idea only works for all-or-nothing "big idea" start-ups who don't have a creative founder. In the practical world, having a creative founder gives you a huge advantage, particularly in UX/UI, MVD (minimal viable design), and avoiding design creep.

Totally agree that a great design cannot overcome poor functionality, and that it is too frequently a distraction from the core mission, but I think the bigger takeaway in this article is the need for/benefit of iterative testing during the development process and the establishment of proof of concept based using a minimum viable product to see how users actually interact with and respond to your apps. Design also shouldn't be an afterthought, as form and function must work together in order to deliver a compelling user experience. If you're curious, the app she talks about (DrawChat) was listed on Apptopia.com

As a counterpoint, plain and boring is not inspirational. If you are working on an app, and the appearance is the bare minimum of functional, you aren't likely to get any kind of feedback inspiration from that part of your own creation.

Creation, whether design or development, is an iteration of making and discovering. As you work, you discover new things along the way. As you work, your creation gives you further inspiration. Your thinking branches out in new ways upon seeing what you have made so far.

Beauty is inspiring. If you are focussed solely on development, you may lose out on some of that. I know code can be (and hopefully is) beautiful, and seeing a clean implementation is inspiring too, the user facing portion should not be a second class citizen in the creation process.