[travisjungroth]

> I believe there is nowadays this "detachment" between programmers and actual (expert) users that greatly impairs the usability of software.

I don't think this is new. I think it's a long standing issue and a huge issue. I worked on home appraisal software and I regret not learning more about the job up front. After like 2 years of developing the app and getting approximately nowhere in the market, the software team actually went on an appraisal. It was eye-opening.

I've also seen the "expert in the room" hired twice and neither time worked (small sample size). I think you need more info in the brain of the dev team, and to have solutions bounced off a bunch of users. One expert ends up as kind of a silo.

[jaclaz]

Sure, there are several issues in the process (hence it is so difficult) the expert(s) must be actually expert (not that easy[1]) and the software house programmer(s) and manager(s) need to be open-minded and willing not to take the (usual) shortcuts.

[1] this is a pet peeve of mine, but at my age I can see the difference between seniority (common enough) and experience (quite rare).