One of the key points for Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF aka Avalon) is to focus on User Experience. Hopefully software product companies will spend less on marketing and advertising and more on design and development. Why?
Because User Experience always trumps marketing and advertising experience.
Marketing and advertising is about how product owners want you to think the your experience will be when using their product. User Experience is the actual experience with a product.
Think about what companies are telling you:
Shoes - "Wear our shoes and you'll be a (insert activity here) superstar"
Clothes - "Wear our clothes and you'll be in style"
Food - "Eat this and you'll be thinner"
Drink - "Drink this and women will flock to you"
Movies - "This is the best movie of the year"
Hardware - "Carry our MP3 player and you'll finally be cool"
The User Experience can range from "That movie sucked" to "I love these new hiking boots".
So when you're writing that next piece of software and think about User Experience. Great User Experience will create consumer driven marketing versus company driven marketing. Good user experience creates stronger binds.
Here are some other people talking about good User Experience.
http://www.goodexperience.com/
http://customerevangelists.typepad.com/blog/
http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/
http://msdn.microsoft.com/windowsvista/default.aspx?pull=/library/en-us/dnlong/html/vistatopten.asp