How important is "design" to you?

So, I'm surfing through the blogs that I "subscribe" to, and I found a link to an entry on "design" and usability. After leaving a comment on Matt's blog (found here), I went and read the original post. This paragraph jumped out to my attention:

I finally got it this week. I just finished reading Made to Stick. I finally realize that it is not all the books with their statistics and theories about design and usability that stuck. It is the personal experience that I had years ago (with a previous employer) when I participated in a usability study of the software that my team was writing.

Insomnia: Why did design become so important to me I just went and downloaded the introduction to the book, Made to Stick. I can read it this week on my new(er) Amazon Kindle reader...