Moving WebWord > Understanding Design Misfits is an good paper to read to get some thinking going on why design goes peculiar.

I'm not sure if it was quite fully thought out enough to be a paper-- it feels more like a long blog-- but that doesn't mean that some of the core ideas aren't excellent.

Personally I wrote the headings of a few of the more powerful notions on my whiteboard so I can evaluate against these criteria.. is the design insensitive? vestigal? over-adapted...?