I agree. But is interface design wholly in the realm of art? It's not a case of "this art will be viewed by a thousand people and some will get it and some won't." It's a case of "hundreds of thousands of paying customers need to know where on the screen to touch to open a new tab."

One of the things I appreciated about the past 20 years of Web design is that a set of traditions and conventions slowly formed, such that a user of one site could quickly figure out how to work the buttons or menus of another site.

Though there are some conventions now in flat and mobile design (like the hamburger icon to symbolize the menu), the steps one must learn to trigger actions on different devices -- touch that symbol over there, swipe to there, tap with two fingers here -- often feels more like some sort of conjuring of a spell than operating a device.