In my opinion usability requires a lot of grunt work. You have to craft error messages for any and all user input. You have to degrade gracefully if the user's

In my opinion usability requires a lot of grunt work. You have to craft error messages for any and all user input. You have to degrade gracefully if the user's interface (no JS, IE6, small screen on a phone, etc) doesn't meet the ideals for which you've designed the interface. Usable is much more work than functional. Most programmers are aware of that, and are willing to put the time and effort in to making what's required. But often the product people, besides deciding what things should look like overall, are also in control of the budget and schedule, and they expect all those kinds of things to just magically appear.