curious that Eli Schiff posted this, as it seems to run completely counter to everything he's written. one can only assume comments here will be taken out of context and quoted in his upcoming reaction piece.

Certainly a polarizing subject and there are pros and cons for both sides of the argument.

My humble opinion is that designers always have to keep on their toes else we're not going to go anywhere. We wouldn't be doing what we're doing now with the technology we have now if people hadn't broken out of the box and challenged the norm a little bit (or a lot). We'd still be sitting around with feathers and ink designing illuminated manuscripts.

Do people who advocate homogeneity believe that we are at the pinnacle point of design and will never evolve from this point? (i.e. let's just stick with what we're doing right now because it's never gonna get any better than this)?

We should by all means strike a practical balance with our work and not be superficial, but I think its also important to remind ourselves that nobody had heard of 'pull to refresh' or 'swipe to dismiss' 10 years ago. We have the ability to learn new things and the future generations will only be even more adaptable to changes so that's something to consider.

I've realized it's a clever underhanded trick when people write "in defense of" articles about something that doesn't need defending. It appears like you have a unique point of view when you title your article like that, but in reality you can just parrot the general attitudes of the time for easy approval.

Who disagrees that digital product interfaces should be super easy to use?

Nailed it. Thanks to Yaron for writing such an important piece.

Solving unique problems begets creative solutions.

On the other hand, how often does patent infringement force companies to make poor design decisions against their will?

In a lot of ways design is just like any other language. There are certain parameters that allow it to effectively communicate information to a broad range of people simultaneously. But if every book was written with the same cadence and structure and character development then we'd be worse for wear. He makes a good point that it's subtleties that separate designs, and I think it's good to make changes in the widely accepted standards progressively rather than abruptly. I've interacted with countless designs that push the bounds to such extremes that they leave me feeling like my grandmother trying to figure out how to program her Tivo.

Very similar to my thoughts here - http://silchev.com/post/140623529212/the-future-of-ux-is-as-little-ux-as-possible

A great read. Restraint is always a goal, but admittedly a difficult one.