There are two major reasons that I can see that there is a fundamental gulf between end users and the IP professionals that are feeding them these applications.
Firstly, education. This semester I am doing a basic database course that revolves around a bunch of ER modelling. Pretty simple data modelling stuff. At my Uni (which seems to be pretty typical of most Australian Universities - can't speak for any other countries) more advanced database courses delve more into the nuts and bolts of the system, and further away from the actual user interface. Our professor basically led us to believe that the user interface was basically something that someone would wack on top once everything else was finished.
In my experience, this is all backwards. The most awesomely genius ER model in the world isn't worth spit if the UI is crap and 50000 employees curse its clumsiness every day. All the CS courses I have taken teach from the machine perspective. While this is certainly very important, I believe that more should be taught from the person/user perspective. Balance is important here.
Secondly, I think many problems arise not because accurate specifications aren't delivered to development teams, but because the users themselves are not able to outline what makes an application 'good'. Much more effort needs to be put into understanding the psychology of people who use technology and what their needs and expectations are.
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Firstly, education. This semester I am doing a basic database course that revolves around a bunch of ER modelling. Pretty simple data modelling stuff. At my Uni (which seems to be pretty typical of most Australian Universities - can't speak for any other countries) more advanced database courses delve more into the nuts and bolts of the system, and further away from the actual user interface. Our professor basically led us to believe that the user interface was basically something that someone would wack on top once everything else was finished.
In my experience, this is all backwards. The most awesomely genius ER model in the world isn't worth spit if the UI is crap and 50000 employees curse its clumsiness every day. All the CS courses I have taken teach from the machine perspective. While this is certainly very important, I believe that more should be taught from the person/user perspective. Balance is important here.
Secondly, I think many problems arise not because accurate specifications aren't delivered to development teams, but because the users themselves are not able to outline what makes an application 'good'. Much more effort needs to be put into understanding the psychology of people who use technology and what their needs and expectations are.