With any sophisticated system that can be learned, you will have power users.
Power users are drawn to ruthless efficiency and undeterred by complexity. They're not just used to it, their skill in navigating complexity that others find intimidating is a point of personal pride. They're willing to invest in deeply learning a system that they’re going to use frequently and their expertise is valued by others.
As a developer of a complex system, power users can be your most vocal advocates and fans.
Though overall, power users are a sensitive lot. They consider themselves to be the core userbase of a system - after all, they spend more time with it than others do. They're prone to taking changes to the system as a personal slight. Anything that could be perceived as "dumbing down" the system devalues their investment in learning the old way inside and out, and there's an underlying fear that elements they like might be removed to appease less sophisticated users. In many ways, power users share traits with hardcore gamers.
In the last decade, video gaming changed. Casual games took flight; the Wii and social games brought a hobby that once lived in darkened arcades lit by the soft glow of cathode ray tubes into the brightly lit living rooms of forty-somethings and coffee shop laptop screens of the world. Gaming became less of a special club as the barriers to entry were lowered. And in came the fear.
Less sophisticated gamers were taking over! Major publishers who once specialized in hardcore gamers' favorite genres started publishing more social and casual games, either in-house or through acquisition of smaller developers. But during all of this, the new face of gaming was distilling down specific tests of skill. Many casual games, lacking in the kind of broad scope that hardcore games were famous for, started becoming more focused in their mechanics to remove tedium unrelated to the core of the game's experience.
To go even further, let’s take a look at board games, a hobby area currently experiencing a renaissance. Enthusiasts refer to American style or German/Euro style games based on certain traits. American style games favor the power user, rewarding deep knowledge of complex rules and the ability to manage or navigate that complexity for the player's benefit. German style games by contrast are characterized by a set of simple rules that interlock to form depth. Grognard-level knowledge is not needed to enjoy these games, yet sophisticated players still love them for their, "a minute to learn, a lifetime to master" qualities.
Casual video games rediscovered this outlook. But more interestingly, indie game developers discovered that they could lure the hardcore community into playing and enjoying much simpler games by giving them a retro/pixel art style. These developers proved that "simple" does not need to mean uninteresting or easy. Many of these retro-styled games are designed to mercilessly beat players to a pulp until they master the required skill sets.
Just as gamers have learned to stop worrying and love simplicity, so too must power users let go and ask if the accepted rituals around computing are truly necessary. Do we still need to press buttons emblazoned with images of 3.5" floppy disks to prevent a machine from losing our work? Do we need to expose the entirety of hierarchical filesystems every time you browse your stuff and let you save your vacation pictures alongside system files, or is it better to be more contextual, offering automatic organization by metadata?
Simple doesn't have to mean limited, but it's rare to reach simple by piling on additions to existing constructs and keeping a cargo cult-like devotion to the ways we've done things for years. Eventually you have to step back and recognize that there’s a limit to how far you can get with increasingly faster horses, you have to invent the car. Certain patterns and habits won’t work anymore. People will have to adjust and it’s going to seem like a pointless exercise - the old way worked, why change it?
At some point you have to learn not to succumb to the initial outcry of your power users and instead say, "hang on, I think we’re onto something here that you’re going to like much better in the long run." Power users often no longer see certain costs involved in the status quo. To them it’s like riding a bike. They internalized it long ago. Any change will be seen as hostile, as change for the sake of change.
This leads to a bias that is difficult to account for when actually evaluating whether a change is a good idea or not. The curmudgeons are quick to succumb to confirmation bias. Tested changes that are later reverted or taken in another direction altogether will be asserted as proof that designers and developers should have listened to their outcries in the first place. Changes that were initially controversial but accepted in the longer term are forgotten and simply become the new old way.
The new world of mobile and tablet computing is exciting partially because it's a frontier. There are relatively few conventions and experimentation doesn't invite the same sort of outcry as significant changes to an established system. But as conventions and ideas solidify in these formative years, the same forces of conservative stasis will continue to grow. This is good as a sign of maturity and stability, but it makes obtaining good feedback on new ideas that much harder.
Developers and designers, don't be afraid to stay the course in the face of initial backlash. But also listen to feedback and engage the detractors to determine why they don’t like a new change. Ask the question, "what are you trying to do?" and address that problem, not one of the route from point A to point B being different.
Power users, despite all of the above, "you moved my cheese" remains a valid criticism. There is a cost involved in changing someone's ingrained habits, but give it a chance and express why it does or doesn't work for you. Remember that "intuitive" simply means, "works like I'm used to." It's entirely possible that the systems you’re used to were suboptimal to begin with and you persevered in learning them anyway. There might be a better way that you can help us to find.
Technology is a dialog. Let's make sure that we keep the lines of communication open as we push forward.