HCI's methods in particular are too expensive to test the conjectures we normally offer about our designs though. A sizeable team of experienced programmers designing, building, or maintaining a significant software product can't be paid for on anyone's research budget, so everyone uses small, short-term projects written by undergrads (or maybe MS students) instead. The results may be real enough, but they won't address our actual questions.

Looking in the other direction, I would like to think that even the most theory-obsessed PL people can appreciate that "intuitive" and "powerful" can both arise from clean design, but I've also been told, "your proofs are boring" as though that's a bad thing.