To me design is really important! I am naturally drawn by good designs, and my passions are towards creating functional and beautiful stuffs. 

I think customer research and user experience design make sure what you create has a long term impact. Because it either makes an experience better or eventually changes people's lives. Prototyping and UI design are another step further to find out how well it is received by the audience. Finally user testing, with a working prototype, leaps from what people tell you, to what people would really do with it.

I cannot emphasis enough that making your design operational is the butter and bread at the end of the day. Design and production are like 2 stages. As a fashion illustration fan, I see these 2 stages as Art and Craft. To create and innovate, fashion designers start with drawing inspiration from all sorts of things, such as plants or sea animals, and they produced fashion art, a vision of creativity, without restraints. Later on, after iterations, what sells is the ready-to-wear version.