Sure, there are a few voices crying in the wilderness (Neilsen, Norman, Wurman, et al), but what's it going to take for the software industry to make a significant shift toward usable, consumer-driven products? It's also arguable that consumers have no idea what they want. I work with a lot of people who are relatively new to the Internet. Their first impression: "There's nothing out there that I want." So I show them how to use Google, and they get interested again. But the excitement fades quickly as information overload sets in. "It's too much, I can't deal with it." Even assuming that the user is willing spend some effort organizing the raw stuff they find by searching, there are no consumer-level desktop tools to help them do so. Builtin bookmark management functionality in browsers is still primitive at best, and available third party tools are not much better.

Jon Udell has been talking about another facet of the usability gem in his recent pieces, noting that it takes longer to make a presentation in PowerPoint than it used to writing the slides by hand (or, I might add, with vi and a troff macro package). One step forward and two steps back.

I think the most important factor in speeding up the commoditization cycle is getting the industry to start listening to its end-user customers. If you see evidence of major software companies engaging their consumer-level user communities in a non-trivial manner, please share. I could use some good news.