Well we're seeing it more often in UI/UX because "forced creative vision" aka "design dictatorship" is more popular and acceptable for designers these days. Especially new designers who don't want to stick to the tried and true rules of design (nor learn them), nor base their designs off of some kind of metrics or best practices statistics. Steve Jobs culminated this attitude through his "I'll tell the user what they want" philosophy.
Because they're the ones hiring agencies, deciding mood and content based on presented ideas, and then approving and revising design throughout the process.
Maybe. But correlation does not imply causation. Users like beautiful quality products that also function as status symbols. They like when the choices have been made for them so they don't have to walk around Best Buy for 2 hours trying to narrow down which laptop they want out of 30 others. But not necessarily someone ignoring their needs and replacing them with his own.
It is a balance, which is why Steve Jobs got to say what he said and do what he did: with his experience in Zen Buddhism, he understood, above all, balance.
Design is two things: understanding people, and creating. You have to balance a pure empathy and understanding of needs and desires with uninhibited creativity. Only then will you create something that people both want and have never seen before.
