> Great design is original thought

I don't agree. For novel use cases, yes there's some truth to that. But consistency is huge in a UX. If basic controls work well for a situation, they should be used. Designers should not be getting "creative" or "original" for those sorts of things.

I don't think you are really disagreeing. I'd guess mikeaskew4 would include the constraints of following platform conventions / HIGs and using native widgets for any GUI. Those constraints do not preclude original thought.