Can Programmers Do Interaction Design?
http://www.cooper.com/content/insights/newsletters/2003_08/Can_Programmers_Do_Interaction_Design.asp

Goodwin, Kim
Cooper Interaction Design
2003

Abstract:

In most of the organizations we encounter during our consulting work, programmers tend to think they’re the best-qualified people to design the form and behavior of a product. In the absence of trained interaction designers, they may be right. They know from experience that no one else is going to think through all the implications of serving up that snippet of data in just the right way, and no one else questions the idea of programmers doing the interaction design because they assume it’s a technology problem. As a result, executives who lead technology initiatives believe that they already get interaction design for free from their programmers. In their opinion, having interaction designers is unnecessary; if the product happens to be hard to use, they assume the programmers just need some sensitivity training. Having programmers design the product is anything but free, though; it's ineffective, inefficient, and risky.