Degree of Difficulty

Malcolm Galdwell writes in his blog on communicating Degree of Difficulty. Gladwell references sports and writing to make the point about the difficulty in assessing the degree of difficulty, especially if you are an outsider.

I think that misunderstanding over degree of difficulty issues is one of the major reasons for conflict between insiders and outsiders. We bridle at the school teacher who asks for a raise, because we don't realize—and we can never realize unless we've been a teacher ourselves—how hard being a school teacher is. Mickelson shoots 75 and says, afterward, he thought he had a great round and we scoff, but only because we don't know golf the way he does and we don't understand how insanely difficult that chip shot was.

This rings very true for good design as well.