> I think it is unfair to say that they are "blinded to the pain".

I mean it more in the sense that it's very difficult to truly conceive of what a new user of the app would stumble over or dislike, if you're very used to it yourself.

Often that means small things that would not be that hard to address become invisible, because there's obvious higher priorities. Other times, things are considered small fries that actually are consistently wrong and need a holistic re-think.

One of the best things to do is to actually watch novice users use your software. This was also a big boost to the "Blender moment", when the Blender studio started inviting over artist and just watched them work in the software. This used to be really hard to do, but has now become a bit easier with screencasting and conferencing tools. I bet FreeCAD is also starting to do more of this.

Thanks for adding additional info! I forgot to mention the Design Working Group as another sign. In KDE we also set up a similar "Visual Design Group" years ago that was behind a lot of the improvements.