Not enough exposure to real-world elements. Every software dev should regularly try conducting a couple of five-minute user studies with 1-3 basic tasks. It w

Not enough exposure to real-world elements. Every software dev should regularly try conducting a couple of five-minute user studies with 1-3 basic tasks. It was just mind-blowing to realize, see for the first time, even though it had alwayws been there, the mind-boggling amount of extra crap there was in my UI, which was, totally unnecessary for basic use, confusing and unhelpful, etc. I understand the need for power users as well, so I opted to create two basic "layers" of UI, along with a layer of brief helpful explanations of each control which can also be shown. There's a lot of work to do, but I've had great results with both power users and novices alike with testing this interface.