> of keeping costs down and profits up.  If people wouldn't use bad UIs, the products wouldn't sell, but they *do* sell, so why shouldn't

> companies take advantage of that?

An observation: it turns out people will pay a premium for "good" UI, look at how well iPhone has done.

In the areas of business I deal with I see an urgent need for more sophisticated user interfaces for various functions. Eg. why can't we have something as simple as Google Docs for XML? Folksonomy tagging, hide complexity from user, etc. etc. Ease of use has a high intrinsic value.