I argued forever with Steemit guys forever to put more focus on the user interface, so I don't disagree with it's importance. But I also argued with them forever that they couldn't operate with a blockchain where their cost to support the basic infrastructure was $90K/month and was going to increase with more users. For practical reasons (available funds), the cost and scalability had to be addressed first.

Beyond that, we also do need to focus on 2nd layer work as well as the existing user experience for the social site. Fortunately, there's no reason we have to limit ourselves to one thing, and the work we're doing on second layer tech can actually yield practical benefits for the social experience (hivemind, the primary software that powers the Hive-based social media sites and has a big impact on the user interface is itself a 2nd layer app).