I don't come from a design background but my father drilled into my skull that nobody cared about my beautiful skills at work. They cared about their problems and if I could solve them.

Coding just happen to be a mean to solve their problems, but they don't understand code, and I don't understand their problem.

After a lot of frustrating client/dev interactions, I came to read "don't make me think" from Steve Krug. I realized the UI was the only language I shared with my customers to start a meaningful discussion.

This turned out to work well, and got me paid, so I sticked to it.