But "designers" are surely understood to be engineers. This problem exists because the company creates positions for designers. If positions were created for usability engineers, we'd get a completely different outcome. (I wish repeating this over and over on social media would cause it to happen.)
Designers != Artists
Designers are supposed to create things that humans can relate to and use, the end-user should always be in mind. They do not just churn out art for its own sake and damn the beholder. So I don’t see the distinction here.
> They do not just churn out art for its own sake and damn the beholder.
But that's the point of this article. As a matter of empirical fact, they do. Visual appearance/attractiveness has dominated over usability since smart phones became our ordinary means of interaction.
(NB. artists never "churn out art for its own sake". They usually want to do something with that art. But to the extent that we allow usability to compete with visual appearance, it can be called "churning out art for its own sake".)
Unfortunately, our UX engineers are on the front-end team. And anyone working with React is just a code monkey, so if they suggest anything related to their area of expertise they cannot possibly be right.