I agree with you about google etc, and that intuitiveness and simplicity benefit smart people as well as dumb people. Also, a smart person is sometimes a dumb person - when tired, unwell, upset or when they need to concentrate on something more demanding.

Although a smart person will benefit from it once it exists, what I'm saying is that the smart person won't be the one to do it, if it seems too easy for them, because they don't feel the frustration. In fact, if it's easy for them but hard for others, it may give them a little ego boost, which they'd like to keep.

Another aspect is smart people who do not like to acknowledge that they are sometimes dumb people... Also, a person with much intellectual effort invested in the old way is less likely to adopt the new one - and even less likely to be the one to change it. This isn't precisely smartness, but a kind of education.

Examples:

- a way to clarify mathematical proofs in papers that are "trivial" and "obvious", with hypertext to rigorously open up the steps (like http://us.metamath.org/mpegif/mmset.html#overview);

- programming languages are often slow to be adopted by expert users of the old way, including those who are very smart; these people aren't the ones to create the new language in the first place.

- computerized legal systems - lawyers are smart, but reluctant to change, probably because they have so much invested in learning what they have already. Similar may be true of doctors, dentists and civil engineers.

Perhaps whenever anyone says "but that's trivial", "it seems clear to me", "that's so easy, why can't you understand", "you're stupid" that their attitude is a flag that this is something worth looking at...

Thanks for your comment, I like your point of view.