Unfortunately in the enterprise, the purchasing decision maker is usually not the user, and may not even use the invoice screen before deciding to buy. So in th

Unfortunately in the enterprise, the purchasing decision maker is usually not the user, and may not even use the invoice screen before deciding to buy. So in the short-medium term it is not in the interested of the business to make it awesome. In the long term ... maybe. The exception to this is in situations where the market is being disrupted. For example when the iPhone 3g came out it just made any other hard-to-use smart phone look like shit. And thus the competition was forced to catch up. However in enterprisey applications we are a long way off that. The awesome invoice screen may add value to the customer, but not much if none of that will be captured by the provider of the software. Unless a certain class of invoice screen is on the list of must-have things the buyers must have, because it is a particular pain point. In which case you will be told by the pointy haired boss to make it awesome, it won't be your choice as the developer. Damn I sound cynical! Your point about users is spot on, and we have all been such users. I mean you have used MS Word ... right? And often at work we have to use such applications. We just push on through. Users that are not programmers may not even know to question it, they assume that is the way it is unless they have used a competing product.