And industrial design will be increasingly important as devices get more personal — and wearable. The Apple Watch has already kicked off plenty of talk about whether it looks good enough to replace designer watches like those from Michael Kors or even Rolex.

“Watches and wearables are moving into that same space of shoes and purses and hats, and not a lot of people have integrated that with technology,” said Brett Lovelady, founder and chief executive of Astro Studios, a design firm based in San Francisco. “So I think we’re going to learn a lot in the next few years about what really sticks.”

Astro Studios designed one of the first popular wearable devices — the Nike FuelBand. Mr. Lovelady said the FuelBand worked because it combined a physical design that sent a message of sportiness and power, and because, crucially, the software experience actually motivated people with entertaining animations, rewards and social interactions.

“It was kind of the total package,” he said.

That package is increasingly the goal of Silicon Valley companies both big and small. At the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Tex., this week, Mr. Maeda gave a presentation he called his first annual Design in Tech Report.

The report made it clear that design is not only a differentiator for companies, it can be an incredibly lucrative one.

Start-ups founded or co-founded by designers, he said, were being acquired at a rapid rate by companies known for having a tech-first approach. Google, Facebook, Adobe, Dropbox and Yahoo, for example, have all bought design-oriented start-ups since 2010, according to Mr. Maeda’s data. He said 27 start-ups co-founded by designers, as well as 10 creative agencies, were purchased by tech companies in the last four years.

In San Francisco, a venture capital firm called Designer Fund is specifically targeting start-ups founded or co-founded by designers that are building great experience in from the bottom up.