Great question.

It does seem that the tech-world lags behind in terms of the role of the designer, when compared with that of Industrial Design for example.

Take IDEO. An Industrial Design consultancy at heart who over the last 10 years have evolved into a consultancy that focus's more broadly on innovation, design thinking, strategy and designing businesses.

Whereas once upon a time an Industrial Designer's job would be to 'skin' a product and bridge the gap between marketing and engineering. The Industrial Designers role at leading design focused now companies now play a more prominent part in the development of business. Providing a divergent-thought design led process to tackle problems surrounding the product and service.

Web designers are yet to take take this step. And for the most part focus on the designing of pixels as opposed to the designing of businesses.

Andrew Chen breaks down IDEO's philosophy of human led design in which they argue that there's 3 perspectives when developing a service, which for me really sums up the true value a design-founder can hold. That of Viability, Feasibility and Desirability. In which:

Viability = Business focus (marketing, finance) Feasibility = Engineering focus (technologies, agile etc.) Desirability = Design focus (customers, aesthetics, etc.)

IDEO design from a desirability focus which means that the user comes first, everything is done from their eyes with a keen focus on usability and aesthetics in result creating a product that is highly revelvant and desirable to the user.

It's a great article, read more here: http://andrewchenblog.com/2009/12/04/does-every-startup-need...

I think more and more in the tech-world are starting to realise this, both designers and non-designers. Just look at the current opportunities for UX guys.

But in my opinion what we really need is more design founders and encourage more designers to spend less time on dribbble.com and more time studying the in's and out's of business.