The core principles of interface design (even graphic design to a slightly lesser extent) have nothing to do with aesthetics. People, mostly developers, dick around with an interface’s aesthetics until they get something that looks cool… but the design still sucks because they didn’t do the actual design parts— knowing exactly what the design communicates to the user about program state, available actions, etc etc etc just through things like information hierarchy, gestalt, visual patterns, focus through visual composition, and things like that. Things that are well-designed are easy to make look cool because they’re sane, organized, and have subconscious meaning to the user. A good interface designer will spend as much time on aesthetics as a chef spends on plating. It’s a nice bonus, but you can have beautifully plated food that sucks, or horrific-looking food that’s phenomenal. I do the world’s biggest facepalm when I see projects doing things like adding customizable color themes in response to people saying their UX sucks.